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NASA Prepares to Launch Comet-Buster

Posted by michael on from the where's-the-kaboom dept.

Chessphoon writes "NASA's Deep Impact, a spacecraft named after the 1998 movie, is scheduled to launch on January 12. If all goes as planned, the spacecraft will collide with Comet Tempel 1 six months later on July 4, and create a crater so that the inside of the comet can be analyzed."

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  1. This is off-topic but.. by mpeg4codec · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Has anyone played around with their little Java orbit simulator? It seems to me that in 2022 or so, the comet will come to a very near miss or possibly even impact with Mars. How reliable is this simulator in the long run, and how likely is it that something of that nature would occur and/or have any major effects?