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Math to Crack Deep Impact Blurry Vision Problem
starexplorer writes "NASA announced that they believe they have a solution for the Deep Impact mission's blurry vision problem: math. Although the craft will still snap blurry pictures of the Tempel-1 comet, mathmetical manipulation will help scientists clear up the images once they make their way back to Earth. A special report and viewing guide are also available at SPACE.com."
No. NASA fixed Hubble's focus problem by adding more optics. It was the first time the shuttle was used to repair a satellite in orbit.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
No NASA fixed that problem by altering the lense of the hubble. It was very similar to a big RK.
Right, and just like St. Einstein, he could calculate PI to 100000000 digits in his head when he was 3 years old. When are people going to stop worshiping physicists just because they're jewish?
Strangely, NASA does not give credit to the inventor of Artificial Metrorite Strike Spectroscopy. It was first published by Scientist and Science Fiction author Jonathan Vos Post. See: HUMAN AND ROBOTIC PRECURSOR MISSIONS TO THE POLAR ICECAPS OF MERCURY, Proceedings of The High Frontier Conference XI: Bringing the Vision of Space into Reality, 11th in a series formally known as the Space Manufacturing Conference, Space Studies Institute, Princeton, NJ, June 1993. Also cited in: "The Ball-bearing Bowling Alternative: Wild Strikes for Polar Ice", Mercury Messenger, Issue 6, July 1994] It was first suggested for the icy poles of Mercury, but was said to applicable for any airtless heavenly body. Sometime before the Mercury orbital insertion, the spacecraft would release a cluster of 5 "artificial meteorites" -- golf-ball- sized 1 kg spheres each of different dense metal rare on Mercury (Tungsten, Uranium- 238, Platinum, Gold or the like). These are spring- or pyrotechnically-released so as to separate from the spacecraft, not interfere with the spacecraft's orbital insertion, and be aimed to violently impact near the North Pole of Mercury. There being essentially no Mercurian atmosphere to slow them down, these spheres impact at various points, nearly simultaneously, at velocities approximately equal to Mercury's escape velocity of 3.476 km/s plus the approach velocity at the time of spacecraft separation. For back-of-the envelope purposes, let's estimate this impact velocity at 5.00 km/s. Each "artifical meteorite" at that velocity, with each weighing 1 kg, carries a kinetic energy of 1/2 mv2 = 0.5 kg (5x103 m/s)2 = 0.5 kg (25x106 m2/s2) = 1.25 x 107 kg m2/s2 = 1.25 x 107 Joules. Since 1 J = 0.2389 calories, each impact carries approximately 2.986 x 106 calories. Since it takes 1 cal to heat 1 g of water by 1o C, and 80 cal to melt 1 g of water ice at 0o C, and 498 cal to vaporize 1 g of water at 100o C in a vacuum, then it takes roughly 148 + 80 + 100 + 498 = 826 cal to heat 1 g of ice from -148o C to 0o C, melt it, heat it to 100o C, and vaporize it. Hence, if all the energy of each impact was used to vaporize ice, each "artificial meteorite" would vaporize 2.986 x 106 cal/(826 cal/g) = 3.615 kg of ice. In actuality, some of the impact would shatter ice, some would send fragments flying, and some would heat the water to a considerably higher temperature, i.e. into ionized gas (plasma). So, if all 5 spheres hit ice, we would get 5 bright flashes, each with a different spectrum. One would be of water with a trace of tungsten, one of water with a trace of gold, one of water with a trace of platinum, and so forth. Additional impurities in the ice would show as traces of other volatiles, such as carbon monoxide, methane, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, cyanogen, and the like. The orbiting infrared CCD spectrascope could easily determine which of the 5 impacts struck ice, and what the chemical consituents of the ice were at each of the impact points. If the spectrascope were even more sensitive, we could release the same mass as a shotgun blast of 5000 1-g ball-bearings, and get a pretty good resolution chemical mapping of the polar caps.