Level 1 Photo Documentation
Following the successful opening by Lockheed Martin personnel of the Stardust Sample Canister (SC) in the Class 100 cleanroom located in Building 31 of the Johnson Space Center (JSC), the Cometary/Interstellar Tray sandwich was transferred from the deck of the SC to the Tray Separation fixture (see pages 8–10 of the Tray Separation activities) that had been designed and built by JSC personnel. Once attached to the Tray Separation fixture, the tray separation post was loosened according to procedures and rotated from the vertical to horizontal positions, offering the Science Team members in the lab there first good look at the Cometary Tray and cometary aerogel.
After the Science Team spent a half hour or so looking things over, a professional NASA photographer—who had been documenting the process all day—set up his equipment and began taking single frame images of each cell on the Cometary Trays at approximately 5:08 pm on the afternoon of January 17. Over the next two hours, individual images were acquired of each cell on the cometary side of the collector sandwich, along with some stereo images of the Cometary Tray and a series of images of the tray periphery and frame on the side. Photos of the Interstellar Tray were also taken; however, unlike the individual cell images taken of the Cometary collectors, only more general quadrant images were acquired of the Interstellar collectors and tray.