Stardust, begun in February 2013, is a four-year research and training program looking into ways of removing space junk (such as fragments of defunct satellites which risk damaging functioning satellites if they collide with them), and ways to deflect asteroids which could have "potentially devastating consequences" if they crash into the Earth. Stardust is an EU-wide programme, funded by the FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Networks (ITN) scheme. The network is composed of ten full partners and four associated partner institutions across seven European countries. There are five universities - University of Strathclyde (UK), University of Southampton (UK), Technical University of Madrid (Spain), University of Rome Tor Vergata (Italy) and University of Pisa (Italy) - plus the Astronomical Observatory Belgrade (Serbia), four research centres - German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Italiano (CNR), French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the European Space Agency (ESA), and four companies - Deimos Space (Spain), Dinamica (Italy), Astrium Ltd (UK) and Telespazio S.p.A. (Italy).
In July 2015, the Stardust project won the 2015 Sir Arthur Clarke Award for achievement in space research.
The Stardust Final Conference on Asteroids and Space Debris will be held at the end of October 2016 at the European Space Agency premises.