Deep Impact attempted its cosmic haymaker into Tempel-1 early on Monday, July 4th with resounding success and even though the impactor was only the size of a coffee table, it did propel the comet into history.
In an early Fourth of July fireworks display, the bigger portion of the craft sent back pictures of the wondrous event and now NASA analysts will begin pouring over them with the enthusiasm of little Charlie finding the last golden ticket.
This unearthly event happened about 268 million miles out and it took 172days to get there from here. The little impactor hit the comet, about the half the size of Manhattan, hit at 1:52 this morning.
“What a way to kick off America’s Independence Day,” said Deep Impact Project Manager Rick Grammier of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The challenges of this mission and teamwork that went into making it a success, should make all of us very proud.”
Now the attention turns to back to the “mothership” of this amazing mission. The VW Beetle sized ship went into what NASA called a “shield mode” to protect it from a body blow from the comet. The interstellar armadillo sent pictures back from the initial hit and went into the shield mode at 2:05 am. Then, after a cometary fly by, the armadillo unrolled itself and started sending information back to NASA.
“The flyby surviving closest approach and shield mode has put the cap on an outstanding day,” said Grammier. “Soon, we will begin the process of downlinking all the encounter information in one batch and hand it to the science team.”
The science team works at the University of Maryland, with a school mascot intimately familiar with “shield mode”. NASA said they spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation in Boulder Colorado.
With this type of fireworks in 2005, I wonder what they plan on doing next year.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
