On July 4th, the Deep Impact mission will close with Tempel 1, and give humanity its first look inside of a comet.
While the fireworks shows for July 4th on Earth will be several hours away, one show in space should get underway around 1:52 AM EDT. That’s when Deep Impact’s probe, Impactor, will slam into comet Tempel 1.
“We are really threading the needle with this one,” said Rick Grammier, Deep Impact project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
“In our quest of a great scientific payoff, we are attempting something never done before at speeds and distances that are truly out of this world.”
The probe will hit the comet at a speed of around 23,000 miles an hour, and create a crater the size of a large house, perhaps as big as a stadium. Meanwhile, the main craft will have about 13 minutes to collect all the data it can about the comet’s composition.
All of the activity will take place at a distance of approximately 83 million miles from Earth. From Earth, ground-based telescopes as well as some based in orbit will watch the collision take place. About seven minutes will pass between the collision and seeing it from Earth due to the speed of light.
Scientists expect to have control of the mission for about 22 hours before turning it over to the Impactor probe and its automatic navigation system. Then, the probe itself will steer toward the comet beginning about two hours before schedule impact.
“The autonav is like having a little astronaut on board,” Mr. Grammier said. “It has to navigate and fire thrusters three times to steer the wine cask-sized impactor into the mountain-sized comet nucleus closing at 23,000 miles per hour.”
Once the collision takes place, the Deep Impact craft will take photos and collect other information about the material unearthed by the crash. With that information, scientists hope to learn more about the formation of the solar system.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
