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Deep Impact Blasts Off For Comet Tempel 1
Wynken de Word writes "NASA's Deep Impact, a copper-fortified, comet-busting spacecraft, was launched Wednesday afternoon. 'NASA had a single second - at precisely eight seconds past 1:47 p.m. - to send Deep Impact on a 431-million-kilometre, six-month voyage to Comet Tempel 1.' The goal is to blast a big hole in the comet and check out what's preserved inside. Also see the Deep Impact site."
"cor! they put a ding in our chariot! call AAA!"
I sure hope they did a better job of packing this one.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Where is Bruce Willis when you need him.
Wont the inhabitants of this comet regard this as an act of war?
"Do comets and our own planet have something in common? This clever mission could answer the question once and for all. "
Very rarely is anything complex answered once and for all.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
That's all mentioned in the article, which I'm sure you read but forgot. A TV sized unit will seperate a day earlier and go smack into the "big rock". The other craft will monitor from a safe distance.
Trolling is a art,
Good to see that for once a crash-course is intentional for NASA. Mayhap they have found their niche... :)
The goal is to blast a big hole in the comet and check out what's preserved inside.
Is that what has happened to the goatse-guy?
As always there are updates at spaceflightnow.com. It appears the spacecraft has safed itself as of a few minutes ago....not good.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Doh!
I don't know if they will find rock or not. I looked inside of my can of Comet(TM) and all that is inside is some greenish white cleanser.
The impactor will disintegrate instantly when it hits, as will its small payload, a compact disc containing more than 500,000 names of people who wanted to vicariously tag along.
Man, I want to be on that CD!
"NASA had a single second - at precisely eight seconds past 1:47 p.m. - to send Deep Impact on a 431-million-kilometre, six-month voyage to Comet Tempel 1" Missing this window of oportunity will prevent the residents of ISS their yearly alotment of ice, a necessary precursor for snowcones.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Does anyone else find it disturbing that NASA named a mission aimed to penetrate a comet after a [bad] movie about a comet penetrating the Earth?
I guess it's better than Armageddon - they probably couldn't get funding for that one.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
Rock.
M$'s sense of morality.
Linux community's sense of Joe6Pack Useability(tm)
A chewy creamy center
Because science is not measured by how many people we send into space.
Very rarely is anything complex answered once and for all.
Obviously you don't read the Weekly World News.
BTW, chief NASA engineer Bat Boy assures me that everything is going as planned.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm sure you just forgot this after reading the article, but the names of the movie and project were apparently derived independently of each other--and around the same time.
It's not like 2004 rolled around and someone who saw the movie decided to call the project 'Deep Impact'
There is another slightly smaller comet inside...
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
Rewind to Jan 2nd, and search. (You can pick up a few +5 posts for reuse while you're there.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Rock, ice, a funny little guy with a trojan helmet (squashed by the probe), a dog with a trojan helmet, a gumball machine full of instant martians and MSG.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
We, as a race, don't know all that much really about "whats out there." But we are still able to figure out where a comet is going to be an how to impact it. But did we stop to think about the possible implications this mission could have on the universe? They were talking on the news about how it will probably make a crater the size of a football field. We already know that that is a huge amount of force.
Think about it like this, you have an 800 pound mass (the 1st rocket, destined for impact) traveling at 37000 kph. Effectively creating the force of 4 and a half tons of TNT going off. If this explosion happened at the surface it would probably make no difference whatsoever, but its not. Will this impact alter the trajectory of the comet? It might only slightly shift it, but for a planet far far away, that slight shift might be enough to cause a ELE on the planet that the comet might now ultamitely hit.
I realize its a longshot scenario, and I'm sure taken into account at some point. But was it taken seriously enough?
Anyway, just my little, "are we considering everything" thoughts....
Memories become legend, Legend fades to myth, and even myth is forgotten by the time that age comes again.-Robert Jordan
Just to clarify, Deep Impact didn't have a launch window of only 1:47:08 PM EST, it also could have launched at 1:08:20 PM EST for 12 January 2004. It actually had until 28 January to launch.
By how many we get back alive?
It's the ultimate disc of greatest hits.
Deep Impact - $330 millon dollars and it looks like a vibrator...Where the fuck are the jokes?
On a related topic, Huygens impacts Saturn 36 hours from the time of this posting. This is the most distant physical impact ever (since Galileo sailed into Jupiter's clouds). Will we find rock, ice, or a hydrocarbon ocean?
First, NASA is fixing the shuttle as much as it can be fixed. We really need a better launch system for humans and probably a separate heavy launch system. Shuttle reliability and cost/kg in orbit have some integral problems.
Second, there's a heck of a lot we need to know about space. For example, the comet will tell us what the early solar system was made of. This is useful in that it tells us about the remnants of supernovas that produce most of the elements we're made of (except for hydrogen). The data will help us fine-tune our understanding of how our solar system was created - are Earth-like planets rare or common?
Lastly, taking a longer view, this is a preparatory mission for man's emergence from the cradle Earth. We'll know what comets are made of, how they're put together (rubble or solid) and what we'll need to know to move them. Why move a comet? Two reasons - one, if one's aimed at Earth, it would be a useful skill. Two, if you want to provide a cheap source of water, comets might be a good source, either placed into orbit, or deposited on Mars for use by colonies later.
Karma Killer:
I for one welcome our comet-moving overlords - as long as it's we ourselves.
In Russia, the probe hits the comet!
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
And what would be wrong with that?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The fact that you do not understand something doesn't mean that you can say that it is useless or unworthy. Bye, Luca
If the aliens from the comet come and start killing the folks named on that CD, I'll just have to hope that my cow orkers mispelled my name, as usual.
See what I've been reading.
'The goal is to blast a big hole in the comet and check out what's preserved inside.'
Won't the impact change the makeup/properties of what *was* preserved inside? If nothing else, it's going to have a higher than normal copper content (and some bits of plastic from that CD).
On the other hand, it does sound like fun. I *love* blowing stuff up!!!
How can you call Huygens an "impactor"? It's a piggybacked probe, not an impactor. In fact, they're hoping that it will still be transmitting even after it lands (it has a small surface science package), although it'll be hitting at a pretty high speed for that, so who knows.
;) They'll probably start getting raw images up in 2 to 2 1/2 days... ah, what a nice Friday that will be ;)
I know this must make me a real geek, but I've been really excited lately... just think - in 1 day 10 hours, we'll have our first probe ever on Titan, one of the most interesting bodies in the solar system, and one that keeps stubbornly frustrating scientists
We're practicing our labials.