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Probe to 'Look Inside' Asteroids
bigjnsa500 writes "A new space mission concept by the European Space Agency called Deep Interior was unveiled at a Paris conference earlier this week, according to the BBC. Apparently: 'It aims to look inside asteroids to reveal how they are made. Deep Interior would use radar to probe the origin and evolution of two near-Earth objects less than 1km across. The mission, which could launch some time later this decade, would also give clues to how the planets evolved.' NASA also has a similar concept called Deep Impact."
Nasa has a similar mission - Deep Impact - which will blow a hole in the comet Tempel 1 and measure the effects.
I'm pretty sure the NASA mission's title - Deep Impact - is partly a homage to the movie of the same name. For all of its flaws, the movie's producers did consult with NASA and make a sincere effort to get the science right.
Armageddon - the Bruce Willis/Ben Affleck flick that was the other asteroid picture that summer - spent zillions on special effects, but botched the science so badly that astronomers were seen choking on their popcorn. As I recall the plot and acting were equally wretched - but the movie was a success at the box office. There's no accounting for taste.
And send a rag-tag deep core drilling team to do the job?
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Just to clarefy - the mission that are talked about is an ESA mission.. y'know, those guys that ain't NASA, nor russkies or from Red China? Anyway, thats really beside the point here.
I judge from your comment, you seem to think that learning about space for the sake of knowledge is not worth it... well, the other option is to learn about space with an eye to make money out of it. It has quite often been proposed that it ought to be possible to mine astroids for raw materials to use in space (build spacestations, spaceships and whatnot in space) or on earth. In order to do this, we need a better understanding on how an astroid is put together - thus this mission.
As for the NASA mission briefly mentioned, thats a completly different mission; it seeks to learn more about comets and how they are made up. While less than ideal for mining, this is important also - not just for the pure science (a concept I think you may find hard to understand) but because we one day may need to alter the orbit / blow up a comet that are on a collisioncourse with earth. If we don't know how it is put together, we're in a worse situation to do just that.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
My whole point to my comment was to highlight the extreme complexity of the question, and in view of that complexity, I believed the article's statement to be a tad unrealistic.
(end logic-only response)
A lot of this comes from my belief that we will get to the heart of the mystery of existence (of planets, of us, of anything) by looking within instead of believing that mere observation, which by its nature is altered by the very act of observing (something that many philosophies have said since long before Heisenberg), is going to give us the really fundamental answers we seek if only we do it enough. Don't get me wrong - science is a wonderful thing that I embrace fully, but it tends to be more useful for problems relating to everyday life than it does for anything really fantastic like coming up with a certain understanding of the mysteries of life. To me this is another case of "the right tool for the job."
I hope it is plain that it's a simple matter of looking without vs. looking within -- neither is at all useless just because one of them has a much more objective nature and can therefore be PROVEN to be useful.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Possible launch in 2008 or 2009. The idea is to build a sistership to the Pluto New Horizons mission, maybe adding some new instrumentation. But AFAICT this is just speculation, and not actually a planned mission (yet). Even New Horizons itself could still be axed to free funds for the Moon/Mars stuff.
karma capped
On the 4th of July 2005, NASA is creating a large explosion visible to amateur astronomers everywhere; you can even see a video of how the explosion will look, sending a 800 lb (iirc) probe into a comet at 10 m/s (I'm sure of the speed.)
But this isn't just flashy, no, we want to, uhhh to,
AHA!
See what the inside looks like, so we need to blow a hole in it. On July 4th. This coming year.
I'm a concientious
Actually, Deep Impact (NASA came up with the name before the movie, by the way) is quite different. Half of the Deep Impact spacecraft will actually ram into a comet (not an asteroid) in an attempt to churn up material from inside the comet. This is so the other half of the spacecraft, as well as telescopes on Earth, can see what is the composition, density, etc. of comets.
>>>>Anyone else noticed that a lot of recent space project proposals state the purpose is to learn more about how planets or even the entire solar system was formed? Is this just fashionable or a ploy to get funding?>>>>>
Knowledge of origins would help constrain the nature of solar systems about other stars. This would tell us how frequently planets inhabitable by humans occur, and planets where there might be intelligent life.
Ironically, were can only see "extreme planets" now with the limited sensitivity of earth-bound detectors. Of the 200-some discovered so far, only the grossly large (several times Jupiter) or super fast (weeks-long orbits) cause measurable doppler shifts their stars. The next generation(s) of space-based detectors will find more earth-like planets.