Deep Impact Comet-Smashing Video

DynaSoar writes "Dan Maas is the animation expert who produced NASA's Mars Rover animation which was subsequently used in the PBS Nova episodes 'Mars, Dead or Alive' and 'Welcome to Mars,' the majority of which was done while he was a Cornell student on a summer internship at NASA. His most recent release is NASA's best 'artist's conception' of the Tempel 1 Deep Impact mission. Nobody knows what will happen when 820 pounds of metal slams into the comet with 5 kilotons of force, but whatever happens, Maas's digital precreation is probably way more entertaining than NASA's imagery is likely to be. Two versions of the Deep Impact QuickTime video are available. A couple notes of interest: the original Mars video was produced as a music video, using Lenny Kravitz and Holst as soundtracks. This is available only to K-12 educators. Also, in the interview in the first link, when asked for an inspirational quote, he quotes John Carmack."

Comments

Re:We need more missions like this.

[Eric Coleman]

NASA already has a TV channel. You can watch rocket launches, which are cool, and watch people work in mission control, which is boring. Reality TV doesn't get much more real than the NASA TV channel.

Re:What would really suck

[ytm]

From TFA:

The kinetic energy that will be released by the collision is estimated to be the equivalent of nearly 5 tons of TNT. However, this will only change the comet's velocity by about 0.0001 millimeters per second (0.014 inches per hour). The collision will not appreciably modify the orbital path of Tempel 1, which poses no threat to Earth now or in the foreseeable future.

You would need much heavier (or faster) probe to change comet's path significantly.

Coral Links Just in case

[OverlordQ]

Site was sluggish and can't remember if we've ever slashdotted NASA before :)

Long
Short

and what the hell Torrent Too

5 kilotons of force?

[laurens]

Nobody knows what will happen when 820 pounds of metal slams into the comet with 5 kilotons of force

...Largely due to the fact that nobody knows what the hell the phrase "5 kilotons of force" means in an impact situation, even if we forgive the use of tons as a force unit.

Or are we talking about an amount of energy equivalent to that released by 5 kilotons of TNT (probable)? Then say so. This is bad science, people. The kind that gets Ariane rockets blown up.

5 tons

[Karamchand]

It would be really cool if at least the submitters of new stories read their linked articles; the page clearly states that there won't be 5 kilotons, but the equivalent of 5 tons of TNT.

Re:deep impact?

[PoitNarf]

Obviously you haven't read anything about this mission at all. The goal of this mission is to blast debris out from inside of the comet so that we can understand what it is actually composed of. Notice how the spacecraft launches a projectile at the comet, and then slows down to stay out of the way so that it can scan the particles that spew out of the crater?

Anyway, I'm pretty sure we don't have the means currently to deflect a large comet or asteroid like they did in Armageddon or something like that. Perhaps the impact data from this experiment will help us in a similar situation as in the movies sometime in the future.

Re:What would really suck

[kfg]

This would be roughly equivilent to trying to hit your house with a dead elephant by giving it a push with your hands. . .from thirty miles away.

KFG

Re:What would really suck

[starbird]

Uh. Space is a near vaccum. What turbulence are you going to experience?

F=MA is the driving force of the cosmos. This comet isn't going to make a u-turn towards earth because a 800lb projectile hits it.

Why not look at the actual orbit of the comet, vs earths orbit and compute the DV required for the 2 orbits to intersect.

Tempel-1 isn't even a NEA. The orbit doesn't even cross the orbit of the earth.