Posted on 07/04/2005 11:03:46 AM PDT by neverdem
WASHINGTON, July 4 -- NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft lived up to its name early Monday when it slammed into a comet with such force that the resulting blast of icy debris stunned scientists with its size and brightness.
With the flyby stage of the two-part spacecraft watching from a safe distance, an 820-pound, copper-core "impactor" craft smashed into the nucleus of comet Tempel 1 at 23,000 miles per hour, sending a huge, bright spray of debris into space.
"The impact was spectacular," said Dr. Michael A'Hearn of the University of Maryland, the projects principal scientist. "It was much brighter than I expected."
Culminating a six-month journey to a point 83 million miles from Earth, the impactor guided itself to a sunlit point near the bottom of the elongated comet where they collided with a force equal to 4.5 tons of dynamite at 1:52 a.m. Eastern time.
"We've had a far bigger explosion than we anticipated," said Dr. Donald Yeomans, a mission scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which controlled the flight. "It was considerably brighter and there was considerably more matter coming off than I had thought."
The purpose of the $333 million mission was to make the most detailed study of a comet to date, striking the mountain-sized hunk of ice and rock, and creating a crater from which would spew some of the primal material that makes up its core. Depending upon the composition of the comet, scientists speculated that the impact could excavate a crater as large as a sports stadium or as small as a house.
Dr. A'Hearn told an early morning news conference that the blast was so bright that initial images did not reveal the size and depth of the impact crater. This hopefully will be revealed in later images recorded...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Jet Propulsion Laboratory/AP
The probe separated from the Deep Impact spacecraft on Sunday and collided with the comet, Tempel 1, which is half the size of Manhattan, early today.
Jim Ruymen/Reuters
NASA scientists talked on Sunday about the space probe that was on course to intercept a comet early on Monday.
This project is damn cool. It is hard enough to land something on a planet, but it is more difficult to place an object close to a moving body without colliding with it and fire a probe into it. Mega kudos to the physicists and guidance folks!
That's what impresses me the most--flying that sucker into the rock. I have a hard enough time just parallel parking my vehicle.
You said it. Both manned and unmanned spaceflight never ceases to amaze me.
Seriously! The pictures on the web link are awesome.
Pretty amazing, eh? It's like spitting a pea from your porch in Alaska and hitting a flying duck in the eye in Australia. Blindfolded (not the duck:))
Yeah, just read that a woman's going to sue because NASA screwed up her astrological calendar. Hahahaha!
Ive noticed that the NASA bashers that usually come out are getting less and less lately with each great NASA triumph, Twin Mars Rovers, Cassini, now Deep Impact.
NASA can and does do things that no one else on earth can do and better then anyone else can do for now.
Give credit where its due you nasty bashers! LOL
The raw spectrophotometric data is in the process of being analyzed.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list. There's a NASA link in comment# 1 with cool pics. Happy 4th of July!
Even they tire of posting the same comments over and over and over. NASA is moving on to new things, and lighting up an asteroid is a great way to do something we can actually see for ourselves in deep space and that cannot be denied.
Awesome.
And no one forgot to convert to metric this time. :D
That is the point of this exercise. What is the comet made of? Water and carbon compounds for starters, but how much, and is there enough to supply a base on, say, the moon.
Right.. so why is this info missing from the report.?.
They have to analyze the data. There is already some data out there from prior spectral analysis of the natural plume, but that would have been coming from near the surface. Water and carbon compounds are known.
It's the first time they ever collected such data. They are going to want all their pertinent scientists agree on the interpretation of the data so they don't have to make any embarassing retractions and corrections. Do you think all those scientists are working today? Happy 4th of July!
It is mind boggling that they can shoot a comet scores of millions of miles away travelling at such a great speed, no less...And how do they know it's there...What radar screen tracks this thing???
But in view of this, what's also mind boggling is how can the 'star wars project' MISS an incoming missle from just a few thousand miles away travelling at a mere thousand or two miles per hour???
Do you believe in UFO's???
I think we do (Give credit :) ..Its just amazing, what Burt Rutan and his folks, did last year.
This image of Tempel 1 was taken by the impactor targeting sensor aboard the impactor spacecraft shortly before impact.
Hey! I can see my house!
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