Astronomy Picture of the Day 01-03-04

NASA ^ | 01-03-04 | Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell

[petuniasevan]

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2004 January 3

Comet Wild 2's Nucleus from Stardust
Credit: STARDUST Team, JPL, NASA

Explanation: What does a comet nucleus look like? Yesterday the robot spacecraft Stardust answered this question by returning the most detailed images yet of the center of a comet. The icy centers of comets are usually hidden from Earth-bound telescopes by opaque dust and gas that boils off during approach to the Sun. Twice before, however, in the cases of Comet Halley and Comet Borrelly, spacecraft dove through the debris cloud of a comet's coma to image the nucleus. Pictured above is the nucleus of Comet Wild 2 taken by Stardust when passing within 500 kilometers. Clearly visible are numerous craters and hilly terrain. The Stardust mission is yet more ambitious -- it has captured particles from the coma and will jettison them to Earth in 2006. Analyses of the images and returned particles will likely give fresh information about our Solar System back near its beginning, when Comet Wild 2 formed.

News on the NASA Mars Landings

[petuniasevan]

Okay! The Stardust mission is an apparent success; now we just have to wait a couple of years for it to return its samples payload to Earth.

As for the Spirit rover mission, it is scheduled to touch down today at 11:35 PM EST. The graphic below illustrates the planned landing sequence.

[petuniasevan]

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michael miserable failure moore hillary evil bitch clinton al sore loser gore bill lying rapist clinton

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[e_engineer]

Great picture of Wild 2.

Have you heard of any results from CIDA (the other instrument on board stardust)?

We have to wait till next year for the sample return, but CIDA data should already be here.

The Cometary and Interstellar Dust Analyzer (CIDA) instrument intercepts dust and performs real-time compositional analysis for transmission back to Earth. The Stardust CIDA is the same instrument design that flew on Giotto and two Vega spacecraft, where it obtained unusual data on the chemical composition of individual particulates in Halley's comet. The instrument is located on the underside of the Stardust spacecraft.

[sistergoldenhair]

Thanks for the ping.

[Soaring Feather]

Good morning and thank you.

This is so exciting. :-)

[petuniasevan]

Sorry, as far as I know there are as of yet no results from the CIDA mass-spectrometer listed online.

[BradyLS]

That's a cool graph, petuniasevan! It gives a pretty clear picture of how things are supposed to go. BTW, do they full-dress rehearsal landings on simulated landers, with the parachute release and bounces? What happens if the lander rests on the wrong face?

[farmfriend]

Too cool.

[Joe Hadenuf]

Fantastic image!

[Joe Hadenuf]

Fantastic image!