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NASA To Shoot Comet With Copper Projectile
Max Entropy writes: "I can't make this up, guys. NASA plans to shoot a comet with a copper missile according to this article from Reuters' Chilean bureau. It says: 'In January 2004, a rocket would launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, a spacecraft that would orbit the sun. In July 2005 the spacecraft would separate from a battery-powered, copper projectile that would collide with the comet 24 hours later at a velocity of 6 miles (10 km) per second....It would produce a crater the width of a football field and up to 100 feet (30 meters) deep.' They say that using copper will help get more accurate readings."
Anyway, the spectral lines of the vapourized material can be analyzed to deterime the chemical composition of the interior of the comet.
It's not an experiment to see if NASA can deflect comets. If it was, it would be extremely limited because it would only consider the "solid" comets; not the ones that are just big piles of loose matter (of which there are many).
And the comet would probably lose all that matter anyway on it's trip around the run. When it goes back in the other direction, you likely wouldn't be able to see the football-field crater due to solar "erosion".
Helloooooooo.........
See what happens, we have these health issues after the Balkans from using depleted uranium there. Now even NASA is being limiting to less effective projectiles, i'm sure they could do a lot more damage than that if they were allowed to use some real firepower. Show those commie comets a thing or two.
They use copper because it's an unlikely element in the makeup of the commet and can be easily separated out of the spectrums produced. There are other choices but what would people say if it was solid gold? 8^)
The question is, did they do their projections in metric or imperial units? ;-)
Reminds me of an archeologist from about a hundred years ago that went around Egypt studying ancient pyrimids with dynamite. He drilled a hole in the side of the head of the Sphyinx looking to see if there was a chamber inside, and dammaged it a bit with one blast.
Of course, this is quite different, but it still seems funny how the old ways come back.
Recent NASA press briefings have also hinted at the possibility that in the coming decade one or more NASA scientists will make a journey to the Empire State Building to drop pennies on passersby.
Current research is exploring various exit strategies to ensure a safe return home. The estimated expenditure for this project is $50,000,000.04 and is expected to launch in 2008
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
And scissors. Eunuchs will be saved, don't you know.
Dude, he said UNIX, not eunuchs.
Hope it's not too lake with those scissors.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
It has been Cape Canaveral for many years. It was renamed Cape Kennedy back in the 60's, but had it's original name returned a number of years ago. The space center is still called the Kennedy Space Center.
-- Error: Cannot find file REALITY.SYS - Universe halted, please reboot!
I'm surprised this didn't get modded up as "Funny". What? You mean you're serious?
Besides, if NASA learns something from this little exercise, I'm sure they would share the information with all of humanity. If someone else wants the comet so much, they should say so.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
News flash!
A copper missile initially intended to strike a comet has missed it's target NASA has revealed. It was subsequently caught in a nearby planets gravitational field and slingshotted onto a direct heading with Earth and is expected to wipe out most of the life in the northern hemisphere. NASA is taking a very scientific stance with this quote: "Ooops!".
The copper cylinder will weigh 500kg / 1,100 pounds, and will carry a camera and an infrared spectrometer. The targetted comet is Comet 9P/Tempel 1.
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From Uni Maryland's FAQ (they're working with NASA on this project):
- Q: If the impactor split the comet, would any debris head towards earth?
As far as the effect on the orbit goes... well, the copper cylinder weighs 500kg and will be going 20,000 mph at the time of impact (source). And I guess I don't know the inertia of the comet, or the angle of impact. But from this picture, it looks like the comet will be pushed away from earth. But I guess if that brings it much closer to some other body, the orbit could change further?The orbit of Tempel 1 is at least 0.5 AU (about 46 million miles) from Earth's orbit at their closest points. There is absolutely no possibility of Tempel 1, the Deep Impact comet, getting near the earth. When comets fragment, the pieces also stay in orbits very similar to the orbit of the parent comet. Danger to the earth is from asteroids and comets whose orbits cross the earth's orbit. Tempel 1 never crosses the earth's orbit. The two orbits are totally separate and never cross each other. Tempel 1 can never be pulled into the earth's gravitational field at any time.
The Deep Impact impactor will just scratch the surface of the comet making a relatively small crater compared to the size of the comet. Even if the comet were to be extremely fragile and break apart, the pieces would still be in the same orbit and would never come close to the earth's orbit.
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Does anybody know what is the size (weight) of the copper projectile ?
That info was missing.
Just another coder...
I'm specially curious about its new orbit; any chance that these scientists can knock it into a new trajectory which will collide with earth in about 70 years? Has anyone calculated this risk as well?
Well ... why not? By all accounts, Mars is just a really big chunk of rock, and nobody's using it at the moment. One crater won't make much of a difference.
It's the same thing we always go through with environmentalists. There's no reason to be afraid of using natural resources. If we always hold off, afraid that we might damage something, we'll never get anything done. As long as the good (scientific data) outweighs the bad (nothing, as far as we know), we should consider it fair game.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Rosetta will send probes to land softly on the surface of a comet. I've got a few friends on that project.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
"IANASBLF (silicon based lifeform).."
between your sig here, the story & comments at hand and my crazy pre-workday grogginess, a wonderful notion has popped into my head- shooting the comet could be actual murder!
I've often suspected that the Oort cloud and the comets would be an ideal place for microbial life to develop. if you think about the materials involved and the history of the solar system, it isn't completely out of the question. picture an asteroid impact on earth during the 2 billion years of pre-cambrian-ness here on earth, causing a cloud of organics kicked up into orbit, which is subsquently passed through by a comet. the comet is 'moist' for its proximity to the sun (the outer shell is melting). perhaps inbound comets would simply shed the earth-dust as they approach the sun, but an outbound comet would keep whatever it picks up. this is how they grow.
After reading this article, I am convinced (not by anything directly mentioned- more by way of intuition) that a comet could in fact be some sort of higher order organism. after billions of years to evolve in a relatively stable envoronment. the entire comet could be an agglomeration of these rugged microbes, acting in unison much like a colony organism (jellyfish, sea anemone, fungusses) or even better, a multicelled creature like you or I. imagine for a moment that each comet is an entire creature, bobbing around in their oort cloud, communicating via vibratory radio fluctuations in their water/carbon/metal selves... mating == collision, and the sun's gravity well is the grim reaper. perhaps there are even predators/prey! we could 'domesticate' predatory comets for orbital protection from asteroids.
I am off to the stationary store to buy a new quill.
:)Fudboy
:)Fudboy
I guess I'm only a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta
The Reuters story is short on details. Full details of the Deep Impact mission can be found at http://www.ss.astro.umd.edu/deepimpact/
I'm quite frankly amazed at the hubris that NASA are showing with this ill-conceived plan! I mean, who in the hell are they do decide that it's alright to blast a 100 foot deep hole in a comet just to gather a little bit of data? The Solar System is supposed to be a common resource for all humanity, not just a load of targets for America to test its fancy guidance systems on, even in the name of science.
There are better, if more expensive, ways to obtain this data if it is really needed. But there's no excuse for this kind of brute force Rambo method of information gathering, and I'd hate to think that it marks the start of a new phase of "science" whereby we obtain data by blowing things up. What's next, making a chemical analysis of Martian rock composition from debris thrown up by a nuclear strike on its surface?
Somewhere some Aliens have found earth on their scanner. By now they know quite a lot about the surface, and now they're sending comets to collide with the earth for some extra readings...
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Privacy is terrorism.
I call on all slashdotters to join the protest against the unjust targeting of high speed probes against such innocent planatery bodies as mars, and this commet. On the other hand its nice to see nasa planning a mission where they _deliberatly_ crash probes as opposed to what usually happens..
NASA Comet News:
Due to outdated computer systems and relying upon Microsoft programs we failed to calculate that shooting the comet will result in a shifting of the orbit so that the comet impacts earth. Unfortunately this was discovered several hours after launch, and we have no way to abort. We apologize for any inconvenience.
~Ken
I suggested a similar mission element to the "Pluto Express" project several years ago. If you slam a heavy material into a solid body fast enough, you vaporize the surface and immediate subsurface layers, and heat them enough to radiate briefly as a black body. This radiation can be captured by a spectrograph, and provide an assay of the materal present.
I doubt this really has much to do with the art of deflecting comets, but certainly that could be a side benefit of the real experiment.
A comet, being an active body, is not a good target for an automated lander. Too much can go wrong in an automated descent and the rount trip light time is generally too long to do anything about issues which arise.
A passive impactor is much more likely to succeed.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Many reasons for this experiment... but the most obvious one is this:
NASA is run by men.
I mean, come on! What guy reading this article didn't get a hard-on at the idea of, basically, slamming a volkswagon beetle travelling 20 000mph into solid rock? This is way fucking better than dropping old computer monitors from the top of a building, shooting old hard drives with armour-piercing bullets or taking a sledgehammer to the laser printer!
Now, if *women* were running NASA, we'd have all sorts of namby-pamby cuddling stuff. Blast hell out of a comet? Dear, no, let's capture it and bring it back to earth! Smash a comet that's going to strike the earth? My, my, no! Let's attach booster rockets to it, and redirect the poor thing!
Rock on, NASA! Beat shit outta stuff for us -- just make sure you take lotsa pictures!
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
First, just to make sure we all know this: The primary purpose of this mission is to determine the interior composition of the comet. Any ballistics experiments are just useful side effects.
For the environmentalists - remember that this comet is going to boil away into nothingness in a few million years anyways.
Secondly, this is important to The Rest Of Us because we hope to be *mining* objects like this some day. Small objects in the solar system tend to fall into one of only a handful of composition categories, and this probe will let us get good prospecting data on one such category.
After testing it on the comet, Nasa plans on using this technology to properly remove Janet Reno from office.
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If we were to relocate the moon such that it wound up impacting with Mars, we'd be worrying about a LOT more than just a few rock fragments that would eventually reach us. I for one would be worrying about:
:) science fiction show on TV. Go SPACE-1999 - I always wanted an Eagle to ride to school in :)
1. Hey, where did that big glowing thing in the sky go?
2. They used *how much* force to do that?
3. Why is the earth wobbling in its orbit?
4. Where did all the tides go?
Mind you, this didn't stop Gerry Anderson making a rather neat (for the 70's
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
" from the cupid-should-be-so-equipped dept "
Um ... yes ... I'm sure he would want to shoot a crater the size of a football field where two people were a moment ago.
"Darling, it felt like the earth moved..."
"It did."
I call on all slashdotters to join the protest against the unjust targeting of high speed probes against such innocent planatery bodies as mars, and this commet.
On the other hand its nice to see nasa planning a mission where they _deliberatly_ crash probes as opposed to what usually happens..
Official GOD FAQ.
The most obvious one is pretty simple: There are a lot of near-earth asteroids, and a armageddon-like one is actually not all that improbable. By playing with a comet like this, NASA can determine a few things
a) Can we shoot a comet with a rocket
b) what kind of damage can we expect the rocket to do
c) weither or not firing a nuke at an asteroid is a viable option in a armageddon senario
d) how much money we can spend on weird crap and get away with it
I'm only partially joking about d.
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Desperation is a stinky cologne
Nuclear physicists quite routinely ask the government for extremely large amounts of money to build an accelerator out of exotic materials, just to smash something. Sounds like NASA wants to get into that game. 8-)
Seriously, they want to see what's inside the comet. The surface doesn't seem stable enough to land a drilling rig, and it's probably not safe to even fly near the comet (pieces keep breaking off). So instead, you shoot a hole in it from a safe distance.
Why copper? The projectile materials are going to show up in the readings, so you use something that is quite unlikely to actually be in there to start with. Not iron, that's a common component of rocks. You don't use platinum or uranium because their presence in the comet even in minute quantities would be quite interesting. You don't use lead because sometimes lead traces are a product of the radioactive decay of uranium, and so you need to measure the ratio of lead to uranium if possible. Copper is the most reasonably priced dense metal left.