NASA prepares for the biggest fireworks extravaganza ever on the 4th of July. Forget the Esplanade and the Boston Pops; we’re going to see Tempel-1 Pops. NASA’s one-of-a-kind space probe, Deep Impact, heads for the comet Tempel-1 and it could be spectacular.
This cosmic slam dance in the mosh pit of our solar system could produce some incredibly photography. But it may not. This whole project could be a bust. That’s the catch; NASA’s doing something they’ve never tried before.
The Deep Impact portion will hang back a fair distance and shoot pictures and hope to survive long enough to get the information back to NASA. They’re figuring about 13 minutes.
. Over the next 22 hours, Deep Impact navigators and mission members located more than 133 million kilometers (83 million miles) away at JPL, will steer both spacecraft and impactor toward the comet. The impactor will head into the comet and the flyby craft will pass approximately 500 kilometers (310 miles) below.
“The last 24 hours of the impactor’s life should provide the most spectacular data in the history of cometary science,” said Deep Impact Principal Investigator Dr. Michael A’Hearn of the University of Maryland, College Park. “With the information we receive after the impact, it will be a whole new ballgame. We know so little about the structure of cometary nuclei that almost every moment we expect to learn something new.”
Deep Impact will provide a glimpse beneath the surface of a comet, where material from the solar system’s formation remains relatively unchanged. Mission scientists expect the project will answer basic questions about the formation of the solar system, by offering a better look at the nature and composition of the frozen celestial travelers we call comets.
John Stith is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
