NEWS: NASA's Comet-Busting Spacecraft on Course, page 1

posted on Mar, 28 2005 @ 11:21 AM

link

On January 12th 2005, NASA launched 'Deep Impact'. Deep Impact carries an "impactor" that is designed, that when released, will collide with a comet and possible creating a stadium-size gouge while the spacecraft's own instruments are put to use in collecting data from the sections that are hurled off.

The Deep Impact craft is set to encounter the comet 'Tempel 1' on July 4th, but officials are attempting to determine why one of the probe's telescopes has not been focusing properly.

www.technewsworld.com
The problem was discovered after a process called a "bake-out" in which heat is used to remove residual moisture from the telescope, which absorbed moisture as the spacecraft waited on the launch pad and flew through the atmosphere into space.

Testing showed the telescope has not focused perfectly, and scientists are searching for ways to fix it.

"This in no way will affect our ability to impact the comet on July 4," Rick Grammier, Deep Impact project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory , said in a statement.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

This will hopefully be a great advance for NASA as they are able to learn more about comets and asteroids. Tests are said to have reported that one of the telescopes has not focused perfectly and scientists are searching for ways to fix it. I am just wondering how NASA plan to ‘fix’ this telescope, say it has been knocked off alignment by 0.00001mm, how are they going to fix that? Can they move it from base or will it require an additional ship to be launched?

Related News Links:
www.technewsworld.com
deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov

Phugedaboudet

posted on Mar, 28 2005 @ 12:06 PM

link

sweet! I hope they will be taking high-resolution, high framerate video, in visible spectrum as well as in frequencies necessary to do spectrographic analysis. not some photo frame-by-frame...I want cool, smooth video to download!

I know a cometary body is (supposed to be) soft, but there should still be some significant thermal energy on impact.

Can you imagine the surprise if the probe bounced off? Boooiiiing!

mythatsabigprobe

posted on Mar, 28 2005 @ 02:17 PM

link

Originally posted by Phugedaboudet
Can you imagine the surprise if the probe bounced off? Boooiiiing!

Or the surprise when it knocks the comet onto an earth collision trajectory...

I'm not sure if I'm kidding or not. I feel like there's something they're not telling us about this mission.

rustiswordz

posted on Mar, 28 2005 @ 03:17 PM

link

I agree, from no news to masses of news.

I wonmder what direction the comet is travelling.... south perhaps?

FLYIN HIGH

posted on Mar, 28 2005 @ 05:50 PM

link

I'd sure like to see NASA get some good results out of this study so we can recoup some of our money.