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NASA's Deep Impact Moved Into Cruise Phase
karvind writes "NASA is reporting that the Deep Impact spacecraft has completed the commissioning phase of the mission and has moved into the cruise phase. Deep Impact mission planners have separated the spacecraft's flight operations into five mission phases. Cruise phase will continue until about 60 days before the encounter with comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005. Deep Impact has been covered on slashdot before"
ok, and when are they sending up Armageddon?
Three rings for the Elven-kings in the sky
I hope it doesn't crash.
I see NASA has decided the best way to succeed is to go with their strengths. :p
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To heck with Armageddon, when do I get to make Deep Impact with Leelee Sobieski?
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Phase 6: The press briefing explaining why they missed.
Isn't needed.
AT&ROFLMAO
Is this when the probe goes around looking for other probes of the same type to "dock" with?
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip. That started from this space port, aboard this tiny probe. The mate was a mighty sailin' man, the skipper brave and sure. Five experiments set sail that day, for a sixty day tour, a sixty day tour......... The weather started getting rough, the tiny probe was tossed. If not for the courage of the fearless crew, Deep Impace would be lost; Deep Impace would be lost. The probe smashed in to the shore of this uncharted space rock, with Gilligan, the Skipper too, the Millionaire, and his Wife, the Movie Star, the Professor and Mary Ann, here on Gilligan's Comet.
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Not the fastest, as Sandia National Laboratories have used one of their railguns to propel a .1 gram object at 16,000 m/s (nearly 36000 miles per hour). A spacecraft is certainly larger than that though, so perhaps the greatest kinetic energy of any such collision?
Meanwhile, at the Springfield Atom Smasher.
"Constable! Make sure to search these workers thoroughly as they leave. Make sure they don't have any atoms in their pockets!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
There's already this exclusive image of Deep Impact's encounter up on the Web.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
uhhh, the reason for the wide range in their estimates is because the composition of the comet is largly unknown. They won't know what its made of until they smash into it and attempt to get some readings from the core of the comet. So it nearly impossible for them to attempt to calculate a reasonable size for this impact since the size of the impact will be determined by the comets composition. Thats the whole point of the mission; to find out what the comet is made of. Since the comet was made during the begining of the our solar system's creation it will give us a good insight into how our solar system was created and what type of materials are most abundant.
No one earth other than those with proper instrumentation will "feel" the effects of the impact.
Here's a story I ran across that would be of interest to those keeping up with "Independence Day" effects on Earth.
One day it's a giant asteroid that will snuff out all life on earth, another day it's a "super volcano", now this.
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Hooray for more space exploration! I was totally rivited to the Cassini/Heugens episode, and loved seeing those pictures of Saturn's rings close-up. The resulting images from the drop to Titan had me pretty-much at the console during the whole experience. Can't wait to read about the results of the comet-smash!
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KE=0.5*4*10^8 kg*(8.3 m/s)^2 = 1.3 * 10^10 J.
This is on the order of the above calculation.
I got a slightly higher value for the velocity, but it's basically 1.035+/-bunch *10^4 m/s. KE is around 2.0*10^10 J. So you have a little more than the energy of the largest supertankers hitting a comet. Should be spectacular.
Which one is more likely to fail, an remote-operated robot drill, or a big hammer?
I guess NASA chose the keep-it-simple way, they throw a big hammer on the commet and analyse the dust that will be ejected from the impact. Its way more simple than landing some robot, to rescue it after. Also, the impact will reveal deeper materials than a robot-drill could reach.
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
wouldn't it be easier to just drill a core sample from the comet?
No.
In the solar system frame, the comet is approaching very fast. Its aphelion is just inside Jupiter's orbit. Our probe is poking along at an Earthlike velocity in a roughly Earthlike orbit- it's the comet that's going to crash into the probe, really, not the other way around.
To get your Black & Decker to it in one piece, you'd have to accelerate to 0 mph relative to the comet. That alone requires gravity assists off other planets. Then you need to design robotics to move around on an object with almost no gravity and a surface that can't be surveyed very well from Earth (thanks to the bright coma). You'd have to drill a hole into a material of unknown composition, in a process lasting minutes to hours rather than microseconds. That means you'll have to make decisions at certain points during the operation, requiring bug-prone programming or impractical communication links to ground-based controllers.
Simply allowing the comet to crash into something and taking pictures of the explosion from a distance is much cheaper and more likely to work.
This will hopefully bring to fruition the hard work of Jana and Audrey and all those other Honolulu-based astrobiology folks for whom I sometimes point this scope at comets.
Now I just have to remember to ask way far ahead of time to be running the scope around then. Or... maybe not. Maybe I should just drive up to the visitor station and kick back with their 16-inch Meade and some popcorn.
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