Cometary Fireworks Go Off Without Hitch

PingXao writes "The JPL Deep Impact mission has successfully slammed a sattelite into Tempel 1 at 23,000 mph. (37,000 kph). The autonomous navigation system was primed for up to 3 course corrections in the final 2 hours of flight but only had to execute two of them. The second was so small - expending less than a pound of propellant - that impact would have occurred without it. Initially thought to be shaped like a pickle, it came to resemble more of a banana shape as comet Tempel I drew closer. Impact was estimated to have released 19 Gigajoules of energy, or the equivalent of 4.5 tons of TNT."

Comments

4.5Kt, surely?

[nagora]

Er.. that's it.

Re:4.5Kt, surely?

[BenjyD]

1 tonne of TNT = 4.184 x 10^9 joule = 4.184 Gigajoules/tonne

19/4.184 ~ 4.5 tonnes TNT

TNT has a lot of energy :-)

Re:4.5Kt, surely?

[Thagg]

Nope - 4.5 tons. About the same as the Tallboys of WW2 that Britain dropped on German submarine pens.

Thad

Re:4.5Kt, surely?

[madaxe42]

Nope. 4.5 t. The energy released by 1 tonne of TNT is 4612 MJ - 4.6GJ - therefore, 19GJ/4.6 ~ 4.5 tonnes of TNT.

Re:4.5Kt, surely?

[imsabbel]

No, 4.5 tons.
But the penetration power is still quite good, because all momentum is initially directed into the ground, very much like it is with a shaped charge.

btw: The pictures are just breathtaking... on them it really looks like 4.5kt (which is a testemony of the amazing light collection power of current telescopes and quantum efficiency of CCD arrays)

Re:4.5Kt, surely?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, 4.5 tons of TNT really equals approximately 19 gigajoules, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaton for more information.

Re:4.5Kt, surely?

[nagora]

TNT has a lot of energy :-)

Yes, it's just that the news last night said "about 5 kilotonnes", so does that mean that the 4GJ figure is wrong or was the news...Actually why don't we just calculate it:

.5*372Kg*(37000Km/hr=10000m/s)^2 -> 18.6GJ.

So, the news was wrong. Fair enough.

TWW

Re:4.5Kt, surely?

[Ford Prefect]

btw: The pictures are just breathtaking... on them it really looks like 4.5kt (which is a testemony of the amazing light collection power of current telescopes and quantum efficiency of CCD arrays)

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the apparent 'explosion' visible in the images is due to sunlight illuminating the plume of dust produced by the impact. Comet nuclei are pretty dark, so I suppose the exposure times were probably cranked right up to see anything of the nucleus itself.

This is all guesswork, of course, but I remember a similar explanation of the 'explosions' visible when the Shoemaker Levy 9 comet fragments hit Jupiter. Mankind has kind of built our own tiny version of that!

Of course, the above could all be utterly incorrect... :-)

Re:4.5Kt, surely?

[rsynnott]

If a few hundred kilos of metal at moderately high speed produced that much energy, we wouldn't need atom bombs.

Re:4.5Kt, surely?

[lpangelrob]

5 tons is a lot of dynamite, if you think about it. :-)

Still, the Chicago Tribune (registration required... google for the AP version) has another comparative paragraph:

Scientists had compared the barrel-shaped probe's journey to standing in the middle of the road and being hit by a semi-truck roaring at 23,000 mph. They expect the crater left behind to be anywhere from the size of a large house to a football stadium and between two and 14 stories deep.

So there's still a great deal of uncertainty, but man, 23,000 mph is a heck of a hit-and-run accident.

Re:4.5Kt, surely?

[keepr]

Just Fricken great, Were all going to DIE now because we knocked the comet off course and it's going to hit some planet inhabited with aliens..

You see the aliens were ignoring us, because until we pulled this stunt we were only destroying our own planet. But now we have become a threat and WERE ALL GOING TO DIE!

They are coming for us with their death rays and their biological weapons. There Is no place to hide and it's all NASA's fault.

If you need me I will be in my home made fallout shelter for the next 50 years.

Re:4.5Kt, surely?

[GutBomb]

while alien retaliation was not the first thought i had, my first thought was "cool we can get to a comet. LET'S DESTROY IT!"

a reflection of our culture really.

Re:4.5Kt, surely?

[Atrax]

My alien-related thought was

"the last thing the probe will photograph as it plummets to destruction in a small, grey, spindly, large-eyed biped looking upwards with a suprised look on its face"

then I sobered up.

Re:4.5Kt, surely?

[Anonymous Coward]

> If a few hundred kilos of metal at moderately high speed produced that much energy, we wouldn't need atom bombs.

You're right - if we could fire chunks of copper from orbit (say, using a railgun) at 23,000 MPH, we wouldn't need atom bombs.

Actually we don't need them anyway, but that's a different matter.

Re:4.5Kt, surely?

[Anonymous Coward]

does anyont think that maybe this was to see if they could hit it say for when a bigger one comes?

Re:4.5Kt, surely?

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't call me Shirley.

Re:4.5Kt, surely?

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep your testes to yourself please!

Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[TheKidWho]

No stars in the backgrounds? this most obviously be a hoax created by our American Overlords just like the moon landings! Those tricky bastards won't trick ME again!

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[Anonymous Coward]

err I ment must, not most.

Anyways whats up with the nasty mods? Labeling a "Happy 4th of July post" offtopic, and labeling me a troll? damn these mods must be PMSing or something...

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[swissfondue]

Stars here: ROTSE Australia> But those of course are easily photoshoped ;)

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[tomhudson]

Don't be so uptight about your typo. It's not like there aren't any in the article summary itself:

PingXao writes "The JPL Deep Impact mission has successfully slammed a sattelite into Tempel 1

Is it too much to expect the editors to, um, *edit* the stories?

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because "4th July" has got nothing to do with the topic, and maybe because you are trolling ?

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[dr.newton]

It's more than a spelling mistake. Deep Impact is technically not a satellite, since it doesn't orbit anything.

(Hope I spelled it right :)

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[morie]

isn't it sad that I read:

Those tricky bastards won't trick Millenium Edition again!

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[tomhudson]

Deep Impact is technically not a satellite, since it doesn't orbit anything.

Damn, you're absolutely right (and me a space fan from way back when :-)

Now watch someone try to say it orbits the sun - it doesn't!

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[TheKidWho]

how is it not orbiting the sun?

Im a phycisist here btw, so please do enlighten me.

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[daeley]

"Im a phycisist here btw, so please do enlighten me."

Are you asking for a CHALLEENGE? (starts to power up)</Stinkoman>

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever hear of a little term called escape velocity?

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[tomhudson]

Simple answer - "Its dead, Jim".

Pedantic answer: orbit == complete circuit. It didn't do even half an orbit http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/factsheet-t ext.html

To say it was orbiting around the sun when it didn't even go half-way would be like me saying I walked around the block when I just went to the corner, or that Alan Shepards sub-orbital flight was an "orbit". What it did was sub-orbital.

Definition http://www.answers.com/orbit&r=67

1. The path of a celestial body or an artificial satellite as it revolves around another body.

2. One complete revolution of such a body.

Now, it might be nit-picking, but it didn't "revolve around" any body - its "orbit" was really just an arc that started and completed in under 1 revolution. If it had taken 1 or more revolutions to complete the mission, then you could have said it had, in fact, orbited the sun. Pedantic, but wtf, this is slashdot, and this is the sort of "angels on a pinhead" argument that gets people to bite :-)

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[M1FCJ]

It's full of stars!

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[XchristX]

Orbit= A Complete circuit???? Read Glodstein my friend (a REAL Physics book). It defines terms like parabolic and hyperbolic "orbits" , and they don't involve any closed circuits. An orbit is a any solution to the classical Coulombic potential.

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[krunk4ever]

most likely the stars are hidden due to the brightness of the comet. i know the parent post meant to be funny, but there's a clear distinction between the moon landing and this.

big cities have the same problem. there's just too much light around us for us to see much or if any stars at night. i remember watching an episode of "Hey Arnold" and they were trying to catch a glimpse of Comet Sally or Harold or something like that but the park was super packed. So Arnold gave a talk on the radio requesting people to turn off their lights at a certain and enjoy the view of a lifetime in the skies. Of course, when that time came, it being a cartoon, lights one by one, went off and the comet soon came by and it was very clear.

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[tomhudson]

Read what I originally posted - it should be OBVIOUS that I was "baiting" (as in baiting th hook). Jeez - do I have to put EVERYTHING between tags except on Troll Tuesdays?

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[RevAaron]

Well, saying that this particular man-made body was "orbiting" the sun does make some sense. That is, it also makes sense if you've walked half of the circuit around your block to say you're "walking around the block." No one said that this body completed N orbits, etc etc.

Orbiting means to be in the process of an orbit. There's nothing in the definition about having to make so many orbits before you "graduate" to being a real orbiting body.

Think of it this way- what would've happened to the Deep Impact if that comet wasn't in the way? Would it have continued its orbit of the sun, or just shot out, leaving the solar system?

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[MillionthMonkey]

No, this is orbital, because definition # 1 fits with respect to the sun. You don't need to meet all the definitions in a dictionary, just one of them. And in a few years Deep Impact will have completed its first solar orbit after nobody is paying attention anymore, so it will meet #2 as well.

This was definitely not suborbital. A suborbital path around the sun would require an intersection with the sun's surface at some future point. An orbit like that would require more rocket fuel than it would take to escape the sun entirely.

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[tomhudson]

... nope, Deep Impact no longer exists, so it will never complete a "first solar orbit". Semantics, I know, but what the heck.

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[XchristX]

I replied to tomhudson's reply-post on orbits, sorry for the misunderstanding.

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[Jason Pollock]

Deep Impact still exists, the "impactor" portion of the spacecraft is what was destroyed, but the "flyby" portion is still going fine.

Jason Pollock

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[Dwonis]

most likely the stars are hidden due to the brightness of the comet. i know the parent post meant to be funny, but there's a clear distinction between the moon landing and this.

I fail to see the distinction between this and the moon. Both lack an atmosphere to diffuse light.

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[jesterzog]

most likely the stars are hidden due to the brightness of the comet. i know the parent post meant to be funny, but there's a clear distinction between the moon landing and this.

I fail to see the distinction between this and the moon. Both lack an atmosphere to diffuse light.

The GP post might have gotten the words wrong. It was probably supposed to be "similarity". For the record in case anyone's wondering, it's nothing to do with atmosphere -- it's photographic exposure time. Stars are very faint compared with the brightness of the comet or Moon's surface, which is why they don't show up in either this photo or the Moon landing photos.

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[tomhudson]

... meanwhile ...

The Vogons get pissed that we ruined the messenger comet, which they had pimped out to display an advertisement about the new interstellar highway that was going to go through when they removed MARS. So they decide that it would be better all around to remove EARTH instead.

A surver was done, and not a single Martian objected (probably because they couldn't find any).

The dolphins aren't saying anything ... but ominously, there has been an increase in government procurement contracts for towels.

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[tomhudson]

As I said elsewhere - "Its dead, Jim."

Sure, the constituent parts will still orbit the sun, but Deep Impact is yesterdays news, todays toast.

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[spike hay]

It didn't exceed the escape velocity of the solar system, Einstein.

Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures?

[Dwonis]

It has everything to do with the atmosphere. On Earth, the atmosphere diffuses incoming light. As a result, we see see a coloured sky during the day, and compared with this, the stars are too faint to be seen.

On the moon, there is not enough of an atmosphere (if any) to significantly diffuse sunlight, so you'll always see a black "sky" on the moon. However, daylight is still just as bright as on Earth, if not brighter, so when you're taking photographs, your camera's aperture and exposure time settings will need to be similar to what they would be outside on a sunny day on Earth. As a result, you end up with a black sky, no stars, and the start of a conspiracy theory.

And the real question is ...

[Ihlosi]

... what did the explosion sound like.

Seems like NASA has missed the chance to answer this profound question raised by Sci-Fi enthusiast by not putting a microphone onboard the flyby probe.

Re:And the real question is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... what did the explosion sound like.

Of course just like in the movie!!.

Re:And the real question is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

don't you need a gas to record sound?

Re:And the real question is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It screamed, that's why you didn't hear it. In fact it probably squealed like a pig.

Re:And the real question is ...

[kfg]

don't you need a gas to record sound?

Nope, you need a medium to transmit vibrations. Whales do just fine with a fluid, in fact a fluid is better, because it's denser. More molecules in closer contact. They "talk" to each other across hundreds of miles using low frequencies. That would be the whales. Molecules don't talk. They don't even "talk." Don't anthropomorphize molecules. They hate that.

Solids work great too. A microphone on the probe would have recorded a sound.

A microphone next to the probe would not, because because an insufficiently dense medium, like a gas, to carry the vibration.

KFG

Re:And the real question is ...

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Obviously the movies add the sound effects afterwards. It's no secret that vacuum does not propagate sound waves.

Re:And the real question is ...

[turbidostato]

"Seems like NASA has missed the chance to answer this profound question raised by Sci-Fi enthusiast by not putting a microphone onboard the flyby probe."

Errr... no. For this to be properly answered, you not only needed a microphone onboard the probe, you would need not to look at it when crashing too.

Everybody knows that a tree falling amid the forest does sound if there's someone over there. The real question being if it sounds when nodoby is looking around.

Re:And the real question is ...

[chrish]

But comets generate an atmosphere as the approach the sun, don't they? Isn't that what makes the coma glow (solar wind hitting the atmosphere)?

Re:And the real question is ...

[l0tu53at3r]

It sounded like an explosion...GAH...you people are making feel incredibly crazy or stupid.

Re:And the real question is ...

[hazee]

I guess they didn't bother because mono sound just doesn't cut it with today's consumers. They would have needed a fleet of probes to capture it in full surround sound...

On a serious note though, could a laser reflected off the comet necleus have been able to capture the seismic vibrations? (and thus tell us even more about the interior)

Re:And the real question is ...

[Xyrus]

IT sounded like this....

~X~

Re:And the real question is ...

[danyon]

Why wasn't there a better camera onboard to shoot the inevitable chunk of debris that flies out of the explosion in a corkscrew path RIGHT INTO THE CAMERA!

Re:And the real question is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm Laser beams. . . Maybe a crew of 10 or more 646lb catfish with laser beams installed on their heads can surround the mass in their little space suits and shoot their laser beam directly at it. They may discover a collection of AOL CDs or Bart Simpsons dolls somewhere within the mass after analyzing their results. This could indicate that the comet is in fact a drifting garbage dump from the future! Seriously though doesn't the object need to be somewhat reflective, and do we have anything out there or on earth that can keep a laser on a target this far away and fast moving? Half the size of Manhatten? Did we just throw a washing machine into some alien civilization's 'Upper East Side' equivalent?? Did we change it's course even slightly?

Re:And the real question is ...

[wisdom_brewing]

uhm... vacuum... silence

Re:And the real question is ...

[maker_of_sieves]

As mentioned by someone else a gas is a fluid, and of course a gas is dence enough to transmit sound, otherwize we couldn't hear each other hear on earth. It's true that liquids and solids are more efficient transmitters of sound, allowing them to transmit sound for greater distances. Anyway i'm getting off the point. A mirocphone would not have worked because space is a vacuum and hence the particle density is too low for sound waves to be transmitted

Re:And the real question is ...

[kfg]

A mirocphone would not have worked because space is a vacuum

A probe is not.

A microphone on the probe would have recorded a sound, albeit rather breifly.

KFG

Re:And the real question is ...

[Stanistani]

Imagine a slide whistle, followed by a dull pop.

Re:And the real question is ...

[maker_of_sieves]

Ahh i see, i thought he was talking about a microphone on the main satellite not the probe - that makes more sense!

Re:And the real question is ...

[Syrrh]

Pfft. Shows what science YOU know. Vacuums make plenty of noise! S'why cats are scared to death of them.

Insides on the outside

[bloodredsun]

If the internal makeup of this comet does represent the compounds present at the start of the solar system, there could be some serious head scratching and changing of theories going on if amino acids are found, let alone any more complex organic compounds like RNA/DNA, however unlikely.

Re:Insides on the outside

[narkotix]

could even make a good film too!
oh wait

Re:Insides on the outside

[gsasha]

Er, and how *exactly* do you think a multi-kiloton impact can detect the presence of RNA/DNA? Sounds as easy as etching data bits on a hard disk surface with an axe.

Re:Insides on the outside

[bloodredsun]

Yep, this is the best sort of science. Serious and far-reaching but with a plot that Hollywood would pinch and incredibly good fun too!

Can you imagine being the person responsible for the weight smashing into the comet, it would wipe the floor with DOOM 3, (although maybe the soundtrack would not be quite so "atmospheric")!

Re: Insides on the outside

[Black Parrot]

> If the internal makeup of this comet does represent the compounds present at the start of the solar system, there could be some serious head scratching and changing of theories going on if amino acids are found, let alone any more complex organic compounds like RNA/DNA, however unlikely.

We already know that amino acids are present in deep space. Slightly more complex molecules too, IIRC.

Of course, that just means they're relatively easy to form by non-biological processes, so it doesn't necessarily follow that they originated on earth by falling from space.

Re:Insides on the outside

[bloodredsun]

It's not the explosion that detects the presence of organic compounds but the observations you can make about the generated blast debris. Either mid or infra-red spectroscopy or radio emissions reveal what compounds are present by their signatures.

Think CSI in space :-)

Re:Insides on the outside

[Anonymous Coward]

there could be some serious head scratching and changing of theories going on if amino acids are found

If there were any amino acids, the equivalent of 4.5 tons of TnT just took care of that problem.

Re:Insides on the outside

[StikyPad]

Think CSI in space :-)

I try not to think about CSI on Earth, but unfortunately you've just ruined that for me.

A mini-animation

[RobotWisdom]

Just because no one else has, yet: inept animated gif

Re:A mini-animation

[The Slaughter]

Wow, I think your server is about to experience a deep impact also.
One's hurtling towards space at ridiculous speeds... and the other's a spaceship aimed at a comet.

Re:A mini-animation

[Ford Prefect]

Also a pretty cool, official NASA Quicktime movie from the impactor's camera - kind of wobbly and jerky, but nifty nevertheless.

I think it contains what are by far the best, and closest pictures of a comet nucleus - and I've no idea if it's from 'final' data yet. I gather there's a lot left to download from the flyby probe, but was it a Huygens-Cassini style relay setup or was impactor data received directly on Earth? If it's the latter, I suppose there isn't much chance of retrieving any more of the close-up data, as the delicate hardware stuck to the impactor's copper mass must have made quite a splat... ;-)

Re:A mini-animation

[Dunbal]

If the probe is travelling at 37,000 kph that's what, about 10.3 km/sec. Whoa, that comet is absolutely huge and the camera has an incredible number of frames/second. I guess if you know the radius of the comet and the speed of the probe you could calculate time it took for the whole series and thus the FPS on the camera...since I don't think the "movie" is in "realtime" (there are far too many "close up" shots compared to "far away" shots, as if the probe had slowed down or the camera was speeded up). It also looks as if the camera was "zoomed" right at the end - the strip of data (top scanline, right side) gets bigger and bigger. What did they expect to see? Ants?

I leave it as an excercise for the geek physicist reader - I'm a biologist (too much math for me ugh!).

Re:A mini-animation

[joeljkp]

It says in the caption that the movie is just a slideshow of stills. I'm guessing they included more close-up ones because it would be more interesting (and shorter) that way.

Re:A mini-animation

[ytm]

If the probe is travelling at 37,000 kph that's what, about 10.3 km/sec.

They never say how the velocity is measured. It is 37000kph relative to what? The comet? Earth? Sun? Fixed point in space?

Re:A mini-animation

[Rich0]

Fixed point in space?

I think we have a potential solution to all those orbital corrections on the ISS. We simply need to find one of those "fixed points in space" and anchor the station to one, thus keeping it forever still. Additionally, we'll be able to figure out which way the earth/sun/galaxy/universe/etc is moving once and for all once we see which way the station flies off after being anchored...

(Yes, I'm guessing (and hoping) that you were being sarcastic about that one. I just couldn't resist...)

Re:A mini-animation

[Tim C]

From Nasa's site about the mission:

the impactor was vaporizing itself in its 10 kilometers per second (6.3 miles per second) collision with comet Tempel 1

It would seem that the speed was measured relative to Tempel 1. That's really the only measurement that makes sense in any case, as that's what determines how hard the impactor hits the comet.

Re:A mini-animation

[dave_mcmillen]

Also a pretty cool, official NASA Quicktime movie from the impactor's camera - kind of wobbly and jerky, but nifty nevertheless.

Well, I think we can be a bit tolerant, here -- everyone's camera work suffers when they're about to splat into a comet.

Re:A mini-animation

[Eric Pierce]

Cool... but I can't get the sound working on this one.

Any help would be much obliged!

EP

Re:A mini-animation

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that was sickening. In the last few frames, you can see all those doomed aliens desperately trying to run away from the impending impact point. Even the maternal drones clutching their egglings weren't spared from a death in the scalding steamball. Is there nothing these heartless people won't do in the name of "science"?

Re:A mini-animation

[dnoyeb]

So long as the Earth does not wipe it out on her next pass around the Sun...

Re:A mini-animation

[Anonymous Coward]

If the probe is travelling at 37,000 kph

The probe was put in the path of the comet. The speed was that of the comet. But carry on otherwise.

Re:A mini-animation

[Stormwatch]

Maybe this will help...

Re:A mini-animation

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to point out that some smartass pointed this out the last time we had an article about space suggesting something was moving but with no frame of reference. We all know by now that this statement lacks a frame of reference. What was the point of bringing that up? How does that contribute meaningfully to the discussion except by spinning off into a discussion of relativity and possible frames of reference?

(Yeah, I see the irony in this.)

Re:A mini-animation

[etheriel]

the impactor relayed data first to the flyby, yes.

Re:A mini-animation

[radtea]

I leave it as an excercise for the geek physicist reader - I'm a biologist (too much math for me ugh!).

Ugh is right--a person pretending to be a scientist who can't do math.

Really, please, do the world a favour and get out of the sciences entirely if you aren't willing or able to learn the basic tools of the trade.

Biology is currently in a serious mess because of the huge amount of genomics and proteomics data being generated by people who don't have the mathematical ability to analyze it, or the scientific capability of understanding the instruments that generate it. I have worked extensively in this area (I'm a physicist) and it didn't take long to realize that biologists are by-and-large people who think they like science but who can't handle math.

For some reason no other science has this problem--geology, astronomy, oceanography, climatology, chemistry... all these people have over the past century come to terms with the fact that their field of study demands a mathematical language to describe it, and developed mathematical toolkits as part of the basic training in the field. Only the biologists, who need it the most, are still holding out.

Re:A mini-animation

[qurk]

I'm checking out the movie, but on NASA TV last night it was fun, they showed the stills as the were coming in, and the comet got bigger and bigger and then you were looking at rocks and craters and then they got bigger, and then nothing happened for like a minute, and then the guys in the room started cheering, and for like 2 minutes they tortured us by saying things like "wow, we gotta get that picture on the screen!".

Re:A mini-animation

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. All science needs math. Only sciences with a mathematical toolkit included as part of the basic training in the field will ever produce anything useful.

Or you can just pull your head out of your ass and realize that "science" refers to the method of study, not the language used to describe it.

FYI, I'm a theoretical chemist. I'm just tired of working with elitist dicks (usually physicists) who can't see value without mathematics. Sometimes assumptions make models (assume the horse is a perfect sphere) that hurt, not help, and more good can be gained by doing other things (such as gathering more data).

Re:A mini-animation

[Tablizer]

Also a pretty cool, official NASA Quicktime movie from the impactor's camera

I only see what appear to be roughly five different frames. Animated GIF would probably be more compact for 5 frames. Jpeg would require a lot of "filler frames" unless they show it too fast to see much. The filler frames use up too much file/transfer space.

Let's hope that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Temple 1's course has not changed very much...

Re:Let's hope that...

[madaxe42]

Bruce Willis declined to comment on his upcoming engagement, however insider sources were heard to say that he was looking forward to having a 'smashing time'.

Re:Let's hope that...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear the comet landed on his head, and broke in half.

Re:Let's hope that...

[Tablizer]

Bruce Willis declined to comment on his upcoming engagement,..

Actually, this is what he said:

"Hey what is that thing in the sky? Its coming our way I think. Maybe it's that NASA comet pr

PWND!!11

[Mahou]

NASA headshots Tempel 1 >(x.x)-

No satellites involved

[MoobY]

No one slammed a "satellite" into a comet, but rather a space ship released an impactor that crashed into the comet.

Re:No satellites involved

[erlando]

So.. An object needs to have some kind of electronics or mechanics on it to be a satellite? There is no way 376 kg of copper can be a satellite?

I see..

Re:No satellites involved

[sprouty76]

No, an object needs to be in orbit around a planet to be a satellite.

Re:No satellites involved

[MoobY]

Please note that the impactor contained electronics and stuff to manoeuver.

The sibling post of this one, which says the object needs to be in orbit in order to be a satellite, gives the correct definition of a satellite.

A block of copper can thus be a satellite, but the impactor was clearly not orbiting the comet.

You see?

Re:No satellites involved

[TheKidWho]

well they both were in orbit around the Sun so....

Re:No satellites involved

[sprouty76]

The Sun isn't a planet, though. Asteroids, comets and planets all orbit the Sun but none are considered satellites.

Re:No satellites involved

[CmdrGravy]

... but the sun is not a planet

Re:No satellites involved

[Dunbal]

Technically anything orbiting the Earth is a "satellite", from the moon all the way to lost astronaut gloves. But you're right in the fact that since this probe was not orbiting the Earth, it wasn't a satellite...

Re:No satellites involved

[Anonymous Coward]

No one slammed a "satellite" into a comet, but rather a space ship released an impactor that crashed into the comet.

I'd go one further. The impactor was going about 1kph. As one of the subtitles for the pictures says; the comet 'ran over' the impactor.

Re:No satellites involved

[loucura!]

A satellite is a celestial object orbiting another of larger size, or a man-made object designed to orbit a celestial body. Ergo asteroids, comets, and planets are satellites.

Re:No satellites involved

[The-Bus]

Not only that, but CNN reported that it released the equivalent of 5 tons of TNT, not 5 million tons. That makes a lot more sense considering it was roughly "washing-machine" sized.

Link to CNN story

I guess washing machine is easier than saying "approximately 0.4 Volkswagen Beetles".

Re:No satellites involved

[hcdejong]

Just think of it as a rapidly-decaying orbit...

Re:No satellites involved

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

I wonder if it will be friends with me...

("Oh no, not again!")

Re:No satellites involved

[TheKidWho]

No, they most definetly are all considered satellites of the Sun.

Seems a Lot Smoother Than I Would Have Thought

[DanielMarkham]

With all that outgassing, you would think a comet's surface would be a lot more sharp -- full of crevasses and ridges (like it was on Deep Impact) But this one seemed almost smooth, like an asteroid. I wonder if this will change the theory of how comets are constructed?

Ugliest Dog I Ever Saw

Re: Seems a Lot Smoother Than I Would Have Thought

[Black Parrot]

> With all that outgassing, you would think a comet's surface would be a lot more sharp -- full of crevasses and ridges (like it was on Deep Impact) But this one seemed almost smooth, like an asteroid.

Some of the final picture before impact showed what looked like big chunks, perhaps glued together by snow.

I wonder whether the outgassing weakens it enough to "melt" to a new configuration each time it passes the sun.

Re: Seems a Lot Smoother Than I Would Have Thought

[WormholeFiend]

maybe if someone succeeded in imaging the molecules of water as they go from ice to liquid in zero gravity, we'd have a clue?

Re:Seems a Lot Smoother Than I Would Have Thought

[Tablizer]

With all that outgassing, you would think a comet's surface would be a lot more sharp -- full of crevasses and ridges (like it was on Deep Impact) But this one seemed almost smooth

Maybe a lot of the gas and dust falls back to comet, filling in holes, keeping it smooth.

Result

[Robotron23]

This is quite likely the finest result Nasa has had for a long time. To quote a professor who was quite surprised by the event :

"It was like mosquito hitting a 747. What we've found is that the mosquito didn't splat on the surface, it's actually gone through the windscreen."

The photos too, are quite amazing. A huge amount of stellar dust, ice, and rock exploded out of Tempel 1's surface. All from the impact of a probe just the size of a washing machine.

Over the following few days, the second module of the mission will further analyse the materials ejected from the comet, and it is believed scientists will discover much about the creation of the universe (some of the material hasn't been disturbed in over 4 billion years) and the composition of comets in general over the next few months as they complete their analysis of this great event.

Re: Result

[Black Parrot]

> This is quite likely the finest result Nasa has had for a long time.

Ignoring a couple of rovers on Mars...

Re:Result

[Anonymous Coward]

"It was like mosquito hitting a 747. What we've found is that the mosquito didn't splat on the surface, it's actually gone through the windscreen."

I think this analogy is quite poor. This may be true in term of dimension, however, certainly not in term of density. I think a massive bolt (with a similar kinetic energy) would be more problematic for a 747 than a mosquito.

Re:Result

[MichaelSmith]

The photos too, are quite amazing. A huge amount of stellar dust, ice, and rock exploded out of Tempel 1's surface. All from the impact of a probe just the size of a washing machine.

Before the impact I wondered if the impactor would disappear into a big snowbank with hardly any light show. I was wrong. It clearly hit rock solid ice and (probably) made a relatively small crater.

Nothing delicate about old Tempel 1

Re:Result

[MoobY]

This is quite likely the finest result Nasa has had for a long time.

Don't forget the gigantic success of the Cassini-Huygens mission from January which was a huge success, partly for NASA and the Mars Exploratioon Rovers which are still strolling around Mars!

Re:Result

[Tango42]

Creation of the solar system, surely? I don't see how this is going to reveal anything about the universe as a whole...

Re:Result

[Anonymous Coward]

Have any preliminary results about the composition of the comet come in yet?

Re:Result

[Hungus]

Ah yes but the Comet has slightly more mass that your average 747 windshield.

Re:Result

[Tim C]

All from the impact of a probe just the size of a washing machine.

Washing machines are heavy, and (with the exception of the concrete in the base) they're not especially dense. This thing would have had tremendous kinetic energy at the speed it was travelling at relative to Tempel 1, and was designed to hit it hard. That it was an impressive collision really shouldn't be surprising.

(But then, I have a degree in Physics, so I'm used to thinking about this sort of thing, I guess...)

Re: Result

[Anonymous Coward]

"> This is quite likely the finest result Nasa has had for a long time.

Ignoring a couple of rovers on Mars..."

The Mars rovers were techincally more sophisticated, though the results from this are both new and substantial. No results from the Mars rover missions are on the same level.

Re: Result

[Bhalash]

And a lil ol' probe named Cassini

Re:Result

[Xyrus]

Not to nitpick, but the mission was to help uncover the secrest of our solar system, not the universe.

~X~

Re: Result

[Chrispy1000000 the 2]

Wasn't there also a pair of probes back in the day? Vonager, or Woyager?

/Yes, I do know that they were the voyagers
//Let's all go on a grand tour

Re:Result

[swissfondue]

For the answer to the second question, please refer to HHGTTG

Re:Result

[Waffle Iron]

I think a massive bolt (with a similar kinetic energy) would be more problematic for a 747 than a mosquito.

However, a 2mg mosquito impacting at 23000 mph would have ~250 joules of energy, which is comparable to that of some handgun bullets.

Re: Result

[MouseR]

>> This is quite likely the finest result Nasa has had for a long time.

> Ignoring a couple of rovers on Mars...

Apparently NASA reused, in this impactor, software they had for the Polar Lander.

har har.

(And, as a repentant soul, congratulations NASA on this great bull's eye).

Re:Result

[Kenshin]

"It was like mosquito hitting a 747. What we've found is that the mosquito didn't splat on the surface, it's actually gone through the windscreen."

I've encountered plenty of mosquitos, but I've never encountered a mosquito MADE OF SOLID METAL.

I think being made of solid metal instead of squishy goo might make all the difference.

Re: Result

[Anonymous Coward]

It IS the finiest result Nasa has had.

The images are of a quality never before seen and the mission it self was picture perfect. I watched it live on nasa tv.

And it was not banna shapped before the last itm which btw WAS used the commet was shapped like an advacoto

Re: Result

[Anonymous Coward]

%check #12980288
Checking...
54 words found.
9 words flagged.
Grade: F-
List of questionable words: finiest it self banna shapped itm commet shapped advacoto
Done.

Re: Result

[Anonymous Coward]

>> This is quite likely the finest result Nasa has had for a long time.
>Ignoring a couple of rovers on Mars...

I'm sorry, I laughed when I remembered the probe that DID crash on Mars.
Then I saw you were not modded FUNNY. Shame on me.

Re:Result

[mibus]

(some of the material hasn't been disturbed in over 4 billion years)

Yeah, all the stuff that wasn't disturbed by the last fifteen alien species firing probes at it ;-)

Last Words

[MichaelSmith]

I wonder if it will be friends with me?

Re:Last Words

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if it will be friends with me?

That's highly improbable.

Re:Last Words

[Pogue Mahone]

I wonder if the inhabitants of Tempel 1 are planning a retaliatory strike?

Re:Last Words

[Anonymous Coward]

> I wonder if the inhabitants of Tempel 1 are planning a retaliatory strike?

Don't worry, we've got a small dog ready.

Re:PWND!!11!!!111!!!oneoneone

[Leroy_Brown242]

They even admited to using an AIMBOT!

Those bastards!

4.5 TONS of TNT?

[Leroy_Brown242]

What I love about space is the scale. On earth, that's a whole lots of explosives. But in space . . . it's not really all that grand. YAY for space!

OR...

[dawnread]

"Impact was estimated to have released 19 Gigajoules of energy, or the equivalent of 4.5 tons of TNT."

Or the equivalent of a Supersized meal from McDonalds...

Re:OR...

[Detritus]

That's about 8,100 Big Macs.

Re:OR...

[jkwscurvy]

Big Mac weighs in at 7.8oz with 560 Kcal The impact gave off 4538940 Kcal of energy 4538940/560*7.8/16=3951.3 Lbs 1.792 tonnes of Big Macs. TNT may be dense in energy but the Big Mac beats it.

Re:OR...

[EXrider]

4538940/560*7.8/16=3951.3 Lbs 1.792 tonnes of Big Macs.

Just want to know, is that Based on the weight before cooking ?

Re:OR...

[bjomo]

If you are going to compare the energy in a big mac to kinetic energy involved in the collision, how fast are you assuming the big mac is traveling?

impact seen from Lowell Observatory

[DiniZuli]

This is a gif animation of the impact as observed from the Lowell Observatory.

Re:impact seen from Lowell Observatory

[cryptocom]

if you look carefully, you can see the "flyby" part of the spacecraft doing the 14 minute burn to get out of the path of the comet...pretty awesome.

Re:impact seen from Lowell Observatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, that is not the Lowell observatory website. It
is Richard Bennion's private observatory in Belmont, CA.

Please check stuff before posting.

Oh, wait! this is /. after all.

- Moomin

Re:impact seen from Lowell Observatory

[bigpat]

interesting, but if so then what are the two other specs having the same apparent trajectory in the lower right hand part of the image in the last couple frames?

Same brightness as the other spec... reminds me of asteroids when the space ship goes of the screen on one side and then appears back on the other.

Re:impact seen from Lowell Observatory

[cryptocom]

i can barely see them (eyes aren't good at all), but i thought they were just flashes of light...dunno. if they are specks following the same trajectory, then i'd have to conclude that the main speck i saw is an anomaly of some sort, but it seems pretty solid, and it moves in a curving trajectory. something i did notice though is that there is no sudden flash on the comet...it seems to slowly grow in brightness toward the end of the clip. i would have thought that we would see a pretty sudden flash or increase in brightness.

Re:impact seen from Lowell Observatory

[bigpat]

Look at the lower right corner of the image and there are two specs that are travelling from bottom right to top left at the same angle as another spec was travelling across the field of view. One is slightly larger than the original spec that you can see in the top of the image, which is what I was assuming you were talking about. I'm just curious, if those other specs of reflected light could be other parts of the spacecraft that came off or something similar or else are just some visual artifacts of some sort.

not sure why there would be a sudden flash visable from so far away. The white that we are actually seeing is reflected light off dust that has been ejected up from the impact not from any explosion as such. Also, if the probe penetrated the surface a ways then you would not see the disintegration, but only the result. But that is all part of the experiment, to see how far the probe would penetrate and what kind of crater and how much material it would eject.

There was supposed to be a Kaboom!

[SirFozzie]

Where was the loud, comet shattering kaboom? I'll tell you what, Mars will not be happy when they hear this, or that they didn't hear this.

Oh Well. Guess next time I will have to use an Illudium-Q-36 Space Modulator.

(toddles off)

Re:There was supposed to be a Kaboom!

[Dolphinzilla]

its PU-36 folks, no Q www.tvacres.com

Re:There was supposed to be a Kaboom!

[SirFozzie]

Ok... trying to lock this down is like asking a geek which editor he prefers, vi or emacs.... So far we've found three "authorative" references to the damn boomstick (hmm.. nah..) that Marvin attempts to blow the earth up with.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with comets and things travelling through space..

(must... resist urge to.. aw hell..)

"Welcome to another episode of PIIIGGGSSSS IN SPPPPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCEEE"

Re:There was supposed to be a Kaboom!

[Dolphinzilla]

OK - no arguments - this has nothing to do with...
anyway until today I had never before heard it called Q-36 - so I went and did a google search and found that people call it both at about a 50% level between PU and Q. Nonetheless, I found two wave files where CLEARLY Marvin says PU, and one where it is UNCLEAR. I stick to my original statement - its PU not Q, or and BTW I'll take vi over Emacs any day :-)

PU_wave1
PU_wave2
PU_or_Q_Wave

Re:There was supposed to be a Kaboom!

[ars]

I don't know what you are hearing, but in all of those Wav's he's clearly saying Q. Are you from europe? I wonder if accent makes a difference in how you hear it.

(I'm from US.)

Mayfly

[otter42]

the vehicle's batteries are expected to provide all the power required for its short day-long life.

It lived and died like a mayfly. If only we could breed it like one, too.

Re:Mayfly

[Jesus_666]

You want to breed mayflies that release 19 gigajoules of energy when they slam into something? Great idea, I'll be standing waaaay over here.

Re:Mayfly

[otter42]

I wish I had mod points.

What's all the fuss about.

[mike1086]

Did someone think this wouldn't work?

NASA have proven quite adept at smashing space craft into various celestial bodies.

Oh hang on...maybe they weren't suppose to do that!

Re:What's all the fuss about.

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

Yeah, NASA is acting like a Rock Band in a Hotel Room. I wonder what they're gonna smash next.

Can we hang a "Please clean room" sign on Pluto?

Get it right

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Illudium Q- 38 Explosive Space Modulator.

Gawd, kids these days.

Re:Get it right

[SirFozzie]

Funny, wikipedia says Q-36

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_the_Martian

Re:Get it right

[Anonymous Coward]

And Wikipedia, of course, has *never* been wrong.

Re:Get it right

[The Infamous Grimace]

No, it's definitely Q-36.

(tig)

Re:Get it right

[Anonymous Coward]

People Talking in Movie shows.. people smoking in bed.. people voting republican.. GIVE THEM A BOOT TO THE HEAD!

Some democrat you are, advocating violence against people for their political beliefs.

Re:Get it right

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! Who does he think he is.. Karl Rove? That's HIS GIG, DAMNIT!

And Nasa's already getting sued for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Got a report that some Russian job's out for a whooole lot of money. o_O;

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,15821163-2310 9,00.html

Re:And Nasa's already getting sued for it.

[Dunbal]

Got a report that some Russian job's out for a whooole lot of money. o_O;

Or "free" publicity...or at least at the expense of the judicial system. The suit is ludicrous - the amount of energy involved is trivial compared to the energy required to change the orbit of this thing in any measurable way. There's no way she can win. But today everyone in the world will hear her name.

Astrologist Sues NASA over comet crash

[ScorpFromHell]

A Russian astrologist who says NASA has altered her horoscope by crashing a spacecraft into a comet is suing the U.S. space agency for damages of $300 million.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200507/s14066 93.htm
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/07/04/deep. impact.sues.reut/

Re:Astrologist Sues NASA over comet crash

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia ...

Er ...

Uh ...

Ah screw it. You know, I think this cliche has finally met it's match.

Unless anyone cares to make an attempt?

Re:Astrologist Sues NASA over comet crash

[lxs]

Astrologist? I thought they were called astrologers?

Anyway, if she is good at her job, surely she should have seen this coming? Even I knew it was going to happen, and my crystal ball hasn't worked right for years.

Re:Astrologist Sues NASA over comet crash

[Lithgon]

Don't those articles look strangly similar?

Re:Astrologist Sues NASA over comet crash

[Anonymous Coward]

duh,

did you even read the article?!

She submitted the legal documents _before_ the crash.

Ob Monty Python quote

[zarkzervo]

"came to resemble more of a banana shape

Sir Bedevere: ...and that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana shaped.
King Arthur: This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.

(Okay! I know it is not about the Earth, but anyway...)

Wasn't there a plaque on that thing?

[metricmusic]

I remember getting a link from Slashdot to the NASA website where you could put your name down on a plaque that would get smashed into a comet. Is this the one? And does anyone know if that list of names is still available? I wouldn't mind seeing what message I wrote all those years ago.

Re:Wasn't there a plaque on that thing?

[ScorpFromHell]

Yes, I guess, if you are referring to this?

Re:Wasn't there a plaque on that thing?

[metricmusic]

yes that's it! thanks.

looks like they've disabled searching the database of names temporarily. I'll check back after the news of the impact dies down. *adds it to bookmarks*

Re:Wasn't there a plaque on that thing?

[joelsanda]

It would suck if the comet belonged to a super powerful race of beings - say the was their pet. The only name left on the plaque was yours...

Violent americans up to no good again!

[Anonymous Coward]

You infidel aggressors are simply not content to bomb afghanistan and iraq!

American aggressors are now bombing innocent comets!

What do you think you will find, WMD or oil in Tempel I? Stupid USA!

NASA should go back to doing what it does best, making fake moon landings!

19 Gigajoules of energy

[TuataraShoes]

I need that in calories. How many mars bars?

Re:19 Gigajoules of energy

[Ford Prefect]

I need that in calories. How many mars bars?

Just for you: 19,730.

Re:19 Gigajoules of energy

[kalpaha]

There's a handy tool for doing that kind of calculations, called 'units'.

A marsbar (65g) has about 294 kilocalories (source: http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk/calories/calo rie_counter/chocolate_sweets.htm)

So, we edit /usr/share/misc/units.dat (may wary depending on distro) to add the line:

marsbar 294 kilocalorie

We then launch units:

%units
2085 units, 71 prefixes, 32 nonlinear units

You have: 19 gigajoules
You want: marsbars
* 15435.619
/ 6.4785221e-05
You have:

So apparently, 19 gigajoules of energy equals ~15436 mars bars.

Re:19 Gigajoules of energy

[neil.pearce]

299kcal for a standard mars bar.
That's 1.25MJ per bar
Thus about 15000 bars

Re:19 Gigajoules of energy

[Dunbal]

I dunno about mars bars, but I can tell you in "snickers" bars:

19 GJ x 0.000239 kcal/J = 4,541,000 kcal / (aprox) 650kcal/large snickers bar = 6986 large snickers bars. How many lbs does a snickers bar weigh? lol

Re:19 Gigajoules of energy

[WormholeFiend]

yea but there's no celestial body named "snickers". /captain obvious

Re:19 Gigajoules of energy

[Fjornir]

Is Inka a geek too?

Re:19 Gigajoules of energy

[Trogre]

~$ units
bash: units: command not found
~$ sudo apt-get install units ..
~$ units
2084 units, 71 prefixes, 32 nonlinear units

You have: rods
You want: hogshead

Ahhh, I love linux.

Size

[PhotoGuy]

"Washing machine sized", they say. I'm lost, help me out here. That must be a tecchie unit of measurement that is only used internally by NASA or something. Can someone put that in terms of "Volkswagens" or "Libraries of Congress" for me?

Maybe the Unix "units" program will do it for me.

Let's see:

$ units
1989 units, 71 prefixes, 32 nonlinear units

You have: washingmachine
You want: volkswagen
* 0.25
/ 4

You have: washingmachine
You want: librariesofcongress
* 0.0001
/ 10000

Ah, now I can visual it.

Re:Size

[auralrothko]

(Picked up in radio transmission from comet)

... And I for one welcome our washing machine-sized overlords.

Re:Size

[smithmc]

Can someone put that in terms of "Volkswagens" or "Libraries of Congress" for me? ...Maybe the Unix "units" program will do it for me.

Does "units" distinguish between VWs and VWs?

Re:Size

[wizardguy]

Er... American or European washing machines?

Star wars (Regan version)

[Anonymous Coward]

The kind of accuracy necessary to hit a speeding comet blows my mind. Sadly, that's the kind of accuracy necessary to shoot down an ICBM.

This has to give the Star Wars proponents some hope and ammunition. Darn. Mind you, it looks like its going to happen anyway.

Re:Star wars (Regan version)

[JasonBee]

Yup...give them all the Missile Shield contracts.

Those 14km wide ICBMS won't know what hit 'em!

JB

Re:Star wars (Regan version)

[Liquidrage]

I don't think the comet detected the incoming projectile and made evasive maneuvers though.

Which would have added a whole new layer of complexity.

Re:Star wars (Regan version)

[kyouteki]

I used to bull's-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home. They're not much bigger than that.

Re:Star wars (Regan version)

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice that putting a tiny object in the path of a relatively huge object that follows a set path is not that difficult.

Note, too, that the probe-comet collisions did not disable the comet in any way. In fact, the comet is considered to be on the same path for all intents and purposes. That is, whatever diversion occurred is so small as to be considered meaningless in our lifetimes. This ain't an ICBM shoot down by any stretch.

MOD PARENT UP

[eurostar]

LOL..

a question of priorities in the united states.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this what my tax dollars are going to? games the folks at nasa can play? crashing expensive spacecraft into comets? making fireworks?

come on where are our priorities?
genocide? starvation? ecological collapse?
NO

Funding NASA so they can make fireworks in space and have a ball crashing spaceships into comets. this makes me sick.

Re:a question of priorities in the united states.

[Dunbal]

come on where are our priorities?

The cost of this mission to you does not represent tax dollars to you. In fact, it's probably tax "cents". Tell me how a few million dollars will end starvation, genocide or ecological collapse? It would just be wasted there, too. At least this way we "waste" it in new and unusual ways and gain knowledge, but I know this is not important to you.

Re:a question of priorities in the united states.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this what my tax dollars are going to? games the folks at nasa can play? crashing expensive spacecraft into comets? making fireworks?

I think you misunderstand. This was fundamental science, which is arguably the most noble and important achievement of mankind.

come on where are our priorities?
genocide? starvation? ecological collapse?
NO

Genocide? What do you suggest we do besides military interventionism? I'm guessing you don't support that...

Starvation isn't an issue on this planet (yet), except in areas where it is artificially made to happen.

Ecological collapse? First of all, tremendous resources are going into making sure this doesn't happen. The biggest factor going forward is population growth, which is mostly fueled by the poorer countries in the world. What do you suggest, forced sterilization? Education doesn't seem to be working too well... Sooner or later, Malthus will have his day, and things will stabilize.

Funding NASA so they can make fireworks in space and have a ball crashing spaceships into comets. this makes me sick.

Funding the IRS and the DEA seem much more expensive and objectionable blunders to me....

Re:a question of priorities in the united states.

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody give this an underrated mod point. This isn't a troll and doesn't deserve a -1.

I don't agree with the poster's opinion, but it shouldn't be modded down just because you don't agree with it.

Re:a question of priorities in the united states.

[jrboatright]

No.

Ignoring the fact that this was supremly cheap, that the money would not have funded a season of "Extreme makeover home edition." Much less solved genocide or starvation.

Ignoring the fact that this provided important scientific information about the formation of the solar system. Yeah, ignore that.

_WHERE DO YOU THINK THEY SPENT THE MONEY?_

This is your tax dollars going to continue to fund the lives of thousands of american citizens, businesses large and small.

Re:a question of priorities in the united states.

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

9/11 for comet people

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the day the comet people, after an uprovoked robotic suicide bombing, begin their war on the people of earth? After all, the freedom of the Oort cloud is at stake.

Re:9/11 for comet people

[ehiris]

This is the reason the comet people decided to invade Mars.

Obligatory since 2001

[Anonymous Coward]

My God, it's full of stars...!

Experiment result

[BigYawn]

Nasa just released the results of their collision experiment:

Tempel: 1
Impactor: 0

Re:Experiment result

[Flamingcheeze]

Nasa just released the results of their collision experiment:

Tempel: 1
Impactor: 0

US Taxpayers: -$300,000,000

Re:Experiment result

[Flamingcheeze]

My impression of the typical /. moderator: reinforced.

LOL

Partly Offtopic

[hyfe]

http://us.cnn.com/ US headline: 'Smashing success': Probe crashes on comet

http://edition.cnn.com/ International headline: 'NASA probe collides with comet'

So CNN has an official policy of only providing cheesy headlines to Americans? That's a policy I can live with though.

Re:Partly Offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised; I expected "US unilaterally invades comet".

Re:Partly Offtopic

[Xshare]

I'm surprised; I expected "US unilaterally invades comet".

"After intense negotiations, the comet has been deemed a threat to national security. The freedom-hating comet bowed down to the vastly superior US forces. The White House says that this is a direct response to 9/11."

Re:Partly Offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

Um its CNN. it would be more like "The glorious USA liberates comet of its regime of terrar. YE HAW! yippie kayaaa USA USA USA!!!! All heil mien furer bush!"

Re:Partly Offtopic

[Grym]

US headline: 'Smashing success'... So CNN has an official policy of only providing cheesy headlines to Americans?

That's not that bad. During the recent Tsunami they had a headline of "Killer Wave". As in, "Killer wave dude!"

I guess appealing to the lowest common demononator makes money.

-Grym

Re:Partly Offtopic

[thatguywhoiam]

So CNN has an official policy of only providing cheesy headlines to Americans? That's a policy I can live with though.P. Yes. That is their policy. If you watch CNN International sometime, it is like a totally different channel. It seems like... news.

Re:Partly Offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe they only give English puns to native English speakers.

How do you respond to this:

Que hace el pez?
Nada

Oblig. Monty Python Quote

[agraupe]

"And that, my lord, is how we know the earth to be banana-shaped."

It had to be said...

Go Team...

[RealBeanDip]

With today being July 4'th, and with this great accomplishment, it's time for a rousing chorus of:

America, FUCK YEAH!!!

Re:Go Team...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one hell of a typo confusing FUCK YEAH!!! with FUCK NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Next!

[davesag]

would love to see them land a robot on one next. sure nasa can put a huge copper bold in front of a comet, but it's a much cooler trick to try to actually get in its path and then speed up, armageddon style and land on the sucker. then let robots report back on it as it wizzes thru the universe.

Re:Next!

[Iron Sun]

You mean the Rosetta mission?

Currently en route to a close rendezvous with comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, to be followed by releasing a lander (which will use a harpoon to cling to the surface). It was in a position to make distant observations of comet Tempel for the current fireworks show.

It won't do what you describe but will instead take a roundabout route that will allow it to basically sneak up on the comet.

Oh, and it's European, not American :-)

Re:Next!

[davesag]

That's fucking awesome! Much more subtle than just letting the comet plough into you. Hooray for the ESA!

thanks for the link.

Re:Next!

[Anonymous Coward]

Rosetta: 1000 Million Euros.
Deep Impact: 333 Million Dollars.

Yeah it is more "elegant" but for 3.5 times the cash it ought to be. The real question is will work, and if it does will it produce 3.5 the science?

We'll see.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away ...

[Anonymous Coward]

We've just seen the Alderaan destroyed. Send your condolences to Princess Leia and don't forget the Earth is next. Is there anything that could stop the evil emprie and its Grand Muff Dumbya?!

Banana?

[Hynee]

I think you'll find that's a picture of the comet's nucleus in the crescent type phase... here's a better view of it.

Not CSI

[benhocking]

If it were CSI we could enhance the image to see the location antipodal to the impact as well!

I won't be impressed....

[hazman]

until we send manned probes crashing into comets.

Re:I won't be impressed....

[Anonymous Coward]

...with you president onboard.

Ka-boom!

[Anonymous Coward]

There was supposed to be an earth shattering ka-boom!

Distance?

[NickeB]

I failed to find any reference to how far from Earth the explosion occured. Anyone?

Re:Distance?

[subtropolis]

roughly the distance to Mars is what i heard.

Re:Distance?

[Anonymous Coward]

About 8.5 light-minutes.

Re:Distance?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the first link: "After 172 days and 431 million kilometers (268 million miles) of deep space stalking, Deep Impact successfully reached out and touched comet Tempel 1"

Re:Distance?

[DiniZuli]

that's a good estimate.
Here it says it's (was) 83 million miles away when the probe hits (hit) (look under "NASA fact" to the left). Here's a graphic.

Sir Bedevere was right!

[noims]

To quote from the holy book of Python (Script of the Holy grail film), Sir Bedevere states:

And that, my liege, that is how we know the earth to be banana shaped.

Obviously, given that the film was set in 932 AD, in another thousand years the comet will look very much like the earth of today!

Noims

Hubble's website has your answer and PICTURES!

[dynky]

"85 million miles from Earth..." http://hubblesite.org/

WMDs?

[ctid]

I'm looking forward to President Bush's explanation when it turns out that Tempel 1 did not, after all, have any WMDs.

Re:WMDs?

[toddestan]

I'm looking forward to President Bush's explanation when it turns out that Tempel 1 did not, after all, have any WMDs.

I'm not quite sure what he'll say, but it will certainly include words like "liberation", "democracy", and "freedom". Meanwhile, the poor people on that comet will have no idea what just hit them.

And now in terms you're familiar with

[Jesus_666]

1 Kcal = 4186 J
1 Snickers contains 280 Kcal = 1172080 J = 0.00117208 GJ
19 / 0.00117208 ~ 16210.5 Snickers

So the amount of energy released is the equivalent of about 16.2 Megasnickers.

Re:And now in terms you're familiar with

[Valacosa]

Chocolate bars aren't SI!

Re:And now in terms you're familiar with

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it's 16.2 Kilosnickers

Re:And now in terms you're familiar with

[Weaselmancer]

Ok that's about the best laugh I've had on Slashdot in a *long* time. =)

Re:And now in terms you're familiar with

[karnal]

TNT wouldn't exactly leave a chocolate and peanut mess, however.

Mmmm. Megasnickers.....

Re:And now in terms you're familiar with

[essreenim]

Yeah, I can just see it now: The (often overweight) mission controllers rise to their fet in applause. Did it it.

Everyone in mission control room: "Yeahhhh, smack the heck out of it.....(silence)... Now lets go waste some more taxpayers money. Where's tha Snickers at.

Re:And now in terms you're familiar with

[Anonymous Coward]

To be picky, that would be 16,2 kilosnickers...
(and yes, the comma is the normal decimal point, as defined in Sweden, and by SI)

Re:And now in terms you're familiar with

[gstoddart]

1 Kcal = 4186 J
1 Snickers contains 280 Kcal = 1172080 J = 0.00117208 GJ
19 / 0.00117208 ~ 16210.5 Snickers

So the amount of energy released is the equivalent of about 16.2 Megasnickers.

Hmmm ... that looks like 16 thousand ... wouldn't that be Kilosnickers??

Megasnickers-level detonations are still a few years away with current technology. ;-P

Re:And now in terms you're familiar with

[RovingSlug]

16210.5 Snickers

Whoah, that's kind of weird. If the Google search is accurate then the dimensions of one Snickers candybar is

11cm x 2.5cm x 2cm == 5.5e-5 m^3

Say a washing mashine is one cubic meter

1 m^3 / 5.5e-5 m^3 == 18 kSnickers

That is to say, the impact is equivalent in not only food energy and physical volume as about 16k to 18k Snickers.

Re:And now in terms you're familiar with

[Anonymous Coward]

So the amount of energy released is the equivalent of about 16.2 Megasnickers.
Ouch. That would sure blow my jaw away!!
/me ducks

Re:And now in terms you're familiar with

[SmittyTheBold]

Dude, 1 KCal is 4184 Joules, is it not?

After all, the specific heat of water is 4.184 joule/gram C.

Actually...now I'm seeing other people have it listed at 4.186. That's odd that there's a disagreement on such a fundamental number.

Re:And now in terms you're familiar with

[Guppy06]

But how many Libraries of Congress is that?

Re:And now in terms you're familiar with

[Kyojin]

Could be worse, in Australia the Snickers would be poisonous too!

Re:And now in terms you're familiar with

[Anonymous Coward]

>> But how many Libraries of Congress is that?

<banzai> Quite a few. </banzai>

Re:And now in terms you're familiar with

[Jesus_666]

Well, er, uh, I'm using Microsoft IntelliUnits. IntelliMega- is the new standard for things that are 1000. Yeah.

...These are not the droids you are looking for.

Re:And now in terms you're familiar with

[MadMoses]

*snicker*

NU-ce-lus

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd been watching the nasa video feed, and at least one scientist repeatedly pronounced 'comet nucleus' as NU-ce-lus. Is this what it takes to get funding for a mission these days?

So how about those Electric Universe people?

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

Seems the electrical universe people haven't had time to update their website about their prediction about the results. IIRC, they were saying that the results would be much less spectacular than predicted, and yet a few hours ago I heard some of the NASA people expressing surprise because the impact released a lot more material than most of them expected. The electric universe proponents also seemed to think that the impactor electrical systems would fail before it reached the comet (because of "megalightning" and all that), while they seem to have have lasted right up until the impact.

So....will they do the right thing and modify their theory to fit the observations, or will we be treated to a lot of hand-wringing about how the theory actually predicted this result (but us non-electrodynamical people just don't understand the theory and its implications)?

And will /. post a follow-up article about the electric universe proponents' reaction to the results, or is that not news for nerds?

Re:So how about those Electric Universe people?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just glancing at the page you linked to, the predictions say:

"More energy will be released than expected because of the electrical contributions of the comet."

and

"Electrical stress may short out the electronics on board the impactor before impact."

I'm not saying they are right, but neither prediction you point to seem to be contradicted.

Re:So how about those Electric Universe people?

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

Thanks; mod parent up, please. I should have taken more care when I was reading their page. Using vague language ("may") in the predictions makes it easier to do hand-waving after the fact, but to be fair about it, I expect people from NASA that made predictions used similar language (no, I didn't go look for any to quote :).

Regarding one of the predictions from the linked page: " The impact/electrical discharge will be into rock, not loosely consolidated ice and dust. The impact crater will be smaller than expected." This, perhaps combined with something I read elsewhere on their site, led me to believe that they were suggesting there wouldn't be a lot of "stuff" ejected upon impact. The images I saw *looked* like a lot of stuff was thrown out, but maybe I'm just interpreting the images incorrectly.

At any rate, they did make predictions about water content, copious X-rays, and temperature at the impact site. I expect we'll get information about all that in the near future, and I'll still be interested to see how those that made incorrect predictions react.

Re:So how about those Electric Universe people?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they say more energy will be released: "More energy will be released than expected because of the electrical contributions of the comet. (The discharge could be similar to the "megalightning" bolt that, evidence suggests, struck the shuttle Columbia)."

Re:So how about those Electric Universe people?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you go to there page they say the exact opposite of what you claim they said, you say
"they were saying that the results would be much less spectacular than predicted" and if you go to there webiste they have the following to say in there list titled "ELECTRIC MODEL PREDICTIONS FOR DEEP IMPACT"

"More energy will be released than expected because of the electrical contributions of the comet. (The discharge could be similar to the "megalightning" bolt that, evidence suggests, struck the shuttle Columbia). "

So im not sure how you interpret more to be less?

Re:So how about those Electric Universe people?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a pretty simple matter of understanding english, actually. The prediction was that it would be less SPECTACULAR (hitting rock instead of ice) and more ENERGETIC (electical discharge).

Saying something will be less dark and more light is also not a contradiction.

What OS did it use?

[Anonymous Coward]

What OS did it use?

Re:What OS did it use?

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

I don't know, but it crashed shortly after booting up.

(Thank you. I'll be here all week. Try the Veal.)

Re:What OS did it use?

[Anonymous Coward]

VxWorks for both spacecraft and ThreadX for the instruments (cameras).

in space...

[Anonymous Coward]

> ... what did the explosion sound like.

The comet screamed. But it was in space, where no one can hear you scream.

In Soviet Russia...

[Polarism]

the comet horoscopes YOU!

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

So the point of your post is to make the same old stupid joke,
and the point of your signature to whore yourself out.

You lessen the world around you.

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[Polarism]

Basically ;)

Except an ICBM isn't nearly that big..

[3.5 stripes]

and won't be following the same trajectory it did last time it made the orbit.

Interesting idea

[b00m3rang]

It might work, but it would probably have to be done from a second probe, or an orbiting satellite. I doubt that the diffusion in the atmosphere would allow any meaningful data to make it back to the surface.

Re:Interesting idea

[hazee]

The source of the laser that I had in mind was the remaining section of the Deep Impact probe, with all the cameras capturing the impact. Those same cameras could potentially have included beam splitters and narrowband filters to pick up the refelected laser light.

i'm being picky, but...

[schotter]

Gases are fluids also. You probably wanted to say that 'Whales do just fine with a liquid'.

Re:i'm being picky, but...

[schotter]

Surface tension is a characteristic of liquids.

Yes, there are differences between gases and fluids. It's been a while for me since high school science, so I'll just point to the wikipedia:

Fluid: "A subset of the phases of matter, fluids include liquids, gases, plasmas and, to some extent, plastic solids."

Gas: "Like liquids, gases are fluids: they have the ability to flow and do not resist deformation, although they do have viscosity. Unlike liquids, however, unconstrained gases do not occupy a fixed volume, but instead expand to fill whatever space they occupy."

Re:i'm being picky, but...

[Cecil]

You are absolutely wrong. Gasses are fluids. Fluid is a term used to describe both gasses and liquids. Surface tension is unique to liquids. It has nothing to do with being a fluid.

Definition:

fluid
n.

A continuous, amorphous substance whose molecules move freely past one another and that has the tendency to assume the shape of its container; a liquid or gas.

Re:i'm being picky, but...

[The_Wilschon]

Gasses obey the laws of fluid mechanics. Thus, they are fluids.

Re:i'm being picky, but...

[apraetor]

Why is this +3 Interesting?

Re:i'm being picky, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, we mods fixed it. I only saw your post after I modded it overrated, too. Someone else modded it the same I see.

Re:i'm being picky, but...

[kfg]

My mother always told me to think positively, so I'm positive I wanted to say liquid. Matter of fact I could use a do-over on the post.

But 'The moving finger writes' and all that crap.

KFG

Re:i'm being picky, but...

[DuckofDeath87]

Almost!
Some (most?) gasses are fluids. Some are not. I can not think of an examble.
Though I am sure that the grandparent meant liquid. Not all liquids are fluids. I am fairly certaint that mercery(sp) is not a fluid.
Also, some solids are fluid like. Glass is a good example. It is not called a fluid. I forget the name.

Re:i'm being picky, but...

[apraetor]

Liiquids + Gases = Fluids.

Mercury is the only naturally-occuring metal which is liquid at STP. LIQUID.

In the Soviet Union

[lildogie]

The comet slams into _you_.

Re:In the Soviet Union

[Anonymous Coward]

The space agency sues *YOU*.

Re:In the Soviet Union

[Physician]

"In the Soviet Union"? If you can't word the joke right, please leave it to us professionals.

Re:In the Soviet Union

[Anonymous Coward]

> "In the Soviet Union"? If you can't word the joke right, please leave it to us professionals.

You're like one of those smart-aleck goth kids who goes to midnight showings of Rocky Horror to be a hip, counter-culture non-conformist, and then shouts down people who say the "wrong" line.

Re:In the Soviet Union

[Physician]

Wow! It's like you've known me my whole life.

Re:In the Soviet Union

[nsaspook]

You sue NASA.
http://www.physorg.com/news4927.html

"Cemetary Fireworks"

[endlessoul]

Did anyone else glance at the title and think "Cemetary Fireworks Go Off Without a Hitch"?

That would have been hilarious if it happened, though.

I may even write that into my will for my funeral!

Ha!

Re:"Cemetary Fireworks"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fireflowers. And they distract the zombies.

Gigajoules?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can somebody give that to me in Jiggawatts?

Deep Slashdotting

[jcummins]

Their site is getting hit like a probe on a comet.

JPL Media types, please read this

[Anonymous Coward]

All this technology over there and the big media (like CNN) have to display a picture captured from video of a picture of a projection screen picture of some geeks desktop as the main event picture. WTF?

Then we get other pictures that have a large black border around them so they are so small they are not worth even looking at.

Can't you guys have a computer there with a decent video output card in it that connects to the JPL internal network and a ftp server that contains pictures as they come in?

I mean, how hard can it be to have a ftp server set up that *automatically* (via a shell or perl script) processes the pictures as they are received and places them on a ftp server, maybe one that even us people who paid for the mission can access.

I am still waiting today for some good pictures, all there is this morning are low res pictures.

Can't these rocket science people figure out how to write a perl script that processes those pictures to make a better quality in a automatic and quick way?

I appreciate all your work, but it's really frustrating at this end knowing how to program and having high speed access, but yet not able to get any good raw data.

How about a UDP broadcast stream we can all tap into and get the raw data ourselves and decode it ourselves via open source software? You think we couldn't understand your specs on the data format? Just give it to us, include sample test data. I can process data as good as your guys there, just give me some specs.

Re:JPL Media types, please read this

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you expect from a media org that told us, seemingly forever, what music the Mars rovers woke up to? And you should have seen the live coverage on NASA TV. It was unvelievably amatuerish.

The tech side of NASA can clearly do good work (as well as bad). But come on. All that nonsense about 'a Bullet hitting a bullet, while being watched by another bullet'.

a) These weren't bullet speeds (they were higher).
b) Bullets don't do course corrections.
c) Bullets aren't in flight for six months, allowing lots of time for those corrections.
c) Bullets don't cast a couple of hundred million.

Re:JPL Media types, please read this

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a guess as to why high resolution pictures are not published instantly.

Scientists who developed this experiment probably "own" these pictures (and data that produced these pictures) for a while. During this period of ownership, above scientists get to write and publish papers using these pictures and bask in limelight.

There are two ways of looking at this.
1) Taxpayers paid for this - so high resolution pictures should be released immediately.
2) Scientists probably spent a good part of their life (say 5 to 10 years or probably more) designing such experiments. So they should get first dibs at using the data generated.

Re:JPL Media types, please read this

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I like a more "amatuerish" live coverage, that's OK and sort of expected in this situation. It was funny when they got all excited and for about 20 seconds, forgot to show the comet pictures everyone else was screaming about.

The live coverage and small mission control was great for the Spaceship 1 launch, it shows you don't have to spend a lot of money to go into space. That was "amatuerish" and I loved it.

But the lack of downloadable, high quality, in focus pictures, including one that would show the actual crater are still missing, why?

Why isn't processing automatic?

And why didn't they plan to have the focus change when the impactor got close up? They knew the optical math and the position of everything vs. time.

Why were the main crafts' flyby pictures so blurry? Couldn't they predict the focus requirements, or have auto focus?

Also, why not send up a retail video camcorder with a large flash memory stick and let it do a nice viedo for us? So what if it's not "hardened", put it in a shelded box and open the cover a day before it's needed. Cheap, easy and we would have a cool camcorder shot! Sony would probably donate one or two for free.

Re:JPL Media types, please read this

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean this stupid picture from NASA TV?

http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/jpg/confirm ation-516.jpg

Someone needs to mirror that because they will probably take it down. The media outlets edited it now so you don't see how lame the source is. What an embarrassment.

It's still the "front page" picture used by all the media, shame on you NASA public relations.

Re:JPL Media types, please read this

[Anonymous Coward]

The crater is hidden by a thick cloud of particles. When it will have dissipated the flyby ship will be too far to resolve the crater. The best hope is that they adjust the flyby ship to make another pass when the orbits meet again in 1 year or 2.

Don't confuse "out of focus" with "low resolution". All the realtime images have low resolution and were sent real quick to make sure that we have something in case the flyby ship hits a rock and is destroyed.

Why can't people wait for the highres images? The impact might as well have been on August 4th. Just imagine it happens on August 4th, and you'll get fine pictures then I promise.

Re:JPL Media types, please read this

[dlevitan]

You obviously don't know what's going on. First of all, most of the data has not been received yet. Its still being transmitted to NASA from the probe. Right now we're only getting low res pictures because that's all that's been sent. The priority right now is data gathering, not data transmittal.
Second, automated image enhancement is pointless. As an amateur photographer, I know that each picture needs to be optimized manually, and using automatic settings often works, but not always. You'll get good pictures, but not 12 hours after impact. Plus I'm sure much of what they received wasn't good anyway and had to be thrown out.
Third, you obviously don't know the complexity of these projects. Most of the public doesn't really care about the low resolution pictures - they'll see the high res pictures when they're broadcast by the media. Which means that there's no point for NASA to deal with the 0.1% of the public who think they deserve to get access to those pictures.
Fourth, I'm really rather insulted by your pompous attitude regarding the people at NASA. No, I don't work at NASA. Nor can I call myself a scientist yet. But I'm an undergraduate physics major and so far my plans are to go on to grad school. Right now I'm spending the summer at the biggest NSF-funded project (not hard to figure out which one it is) and I will tell you that the people who run the project are brilliant and have no time to deal with whiners like you. If you really wanted to work on these kinds of missions, why didn't you dedicate your life to science instead of just whining about how you don't have access to all the data. Because I doubt you can figure out much from the data, and I find your arrogance to be purely insulting.

Re:JPL Media types, please read this

[amightywind]

I posted a similar response for the Titan landing, where pictures where released with agonising slowness, and only accompanied by blathering from researchers. These raw images should be posted (preferably a bittorrent) complete with navigation and exposure information as soon as they are recieved. NASA and JPL are pretty good about PR, but the growing catalog of space imagery is nowhere near as accessable and useable as it should be.

There is also a "Dead Sea Scrolls" attitude by researchers toward raw data. They figure they should be able to see results and cherry pick them before the rest of us get so see anything significant.

Re:JPL Media types, please read this

[Aardpig]

There is also a "Dead Sea Scrolls" attitude by researchers toward raw data. They figure they should be able to see results and cherry pick them before the rest of us get so see anything significant.

Perhaps they figure they have a right to see the data first. After all, it's them that conceived, designed and built the whole experiment. Why should some Joe Schmoe like you, who has contributed absolutely nothing to the project, be given access to the data before the project team has had their usual 12-month headstart?

Re:JPL Media types, please read this

[amightywind]

Why should some Joe Schmoe like you, who has contributed absolutely nothing to the project, be given access to the data before the project team has had their usual 12-month headstart?

It is pretty obvious. Joe Shmoes like me fund these eggheads and want better performance out of them.

Re:JPL Media types, please read this

[Aardpig]

It is pretty obvious. Joe Shmoes like me fund these eggheads and want better performance out of them.

If you want better performance, then why take away their incentive (proprietry data rights) to do bold, innovative science? Dude, you have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: non-project scientists have to wait c. 1 year for the data to become publically available. They have no problems with this wait. Why then are you whining about data access, when there's likely bugger all real science that you can achieve with the data? Sure, you've paid taxes (cents) to support the project; but if you think that entitles you to the same rights as those whove expended blood, sweat and tears on the project, then you're a fool.

If you want proprietry rights, then learn some science and start a project of your own. Otherwise, quit crying.

Re:JPL Media types, please read this

[amightywind]

Sure, you've paid taxes (cents) to support the project; but if you think that entitles you to the same rights as those whove expended blood, sweat and tears on the project, then you're a fool.

I don't see how mission data being more open is impinging on anyones rights. You aren't thinking clearly. Arbitrary and gratuitous hiding of interesting data for a select few is not in the public interest. If you think of science data as property in the material sense, you are also confused.

Re:No satellites involved, Soooo...

[Ralconte]

What do you call something man-made orbiting the Sun, packed with electronics? I think the solar observation thingys are called satellites. Both the comet and the impactor remain in the solar system, so they're in orbit. That the impactor had sensors and manovering thrusters is sort of new to a lot of people. Meh.. maybe we should just call everything a probe instead.

And, of course, In Russia the comet hits _you_

[Snowhare]

No, really: Tunguska, June 30th 1908. :)

Declaration of War.

[infonography]

We the comets of the Cometary halo, so declare open hostilities against the planet Earth and it's organization NASA for the unprovoked attack on one of our members.

We have begun a program of flybys intented to scout out your defenses.

Fear the Skies Monkeyboys!

That's MegaSnickers...

[Anonymous Coward]

So the amount of energy released is the equivalent of about 16.2 Megasnickers. ...you insensitive clod. Please capitalize a proper name when it is used as a unit of measure.

Aliens Really Mad

[trongey]

So did anyone else notice the building at the edge of the crater near the top of this image?

The owners of that comet research facility have got to be seriously torqued about us blowing it away.

Correct.

[Weaselmancer]

It does.

A plaque on both your houses!!

[Anonymous Coward]

>> It would suck if the comet belonged to a super powerful race of beings

Great. Here come the Space Vampires(TM).

Everybody kiss your ass goodbye! :( :( :(

Apparent Shape of Flying Vegetation

[PingPongBoy]

Initially thought to be shaped like a pickle, it came to resemble more of a banana shape

That goes without saying. Recall the law on the shape of flying food.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

The shape of Comet Tempel 1

[ctwxman]

From the original post: "Initially thought to be shaped like a pickle, it came to resemble more of a banana shape as comet Tempel I drew closer." For four seasons I hosted Inside Space, a science fact program on the SciFi Channel (it's like being on the Celibacy Show on Playboy). We traveled everywhere visiting the brightest minds in space (pun intended) and nearly every human on the Earth who has "rocket scientist" on his/her business card. There was one recurring theme. Everything in space that's not a planet or star is potato shaped - period, case closed. Next.

What a bunch of loons.

[i41Overlord]

I took a look at that website and I can see that they're a bunch of loons. It surprises me when I read websites made by someone who obviously has a good grasp on math and science, but apparently little to no grasp on reality. I find it strange that people can turn out that way.

What's the name of that condition? They can accurately calculate the energy released when they open a bottle of soda, but when they can't find a belonging of theirs, the notion that a space alien came by and collected it for testing seems just as plausible to them as the possibility that they just misplaced it. No grasp on reality.

Re:What a bunch of loons.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the name of that condition?

Educated beyond intelligence, no they would be intellectuals then.

How about: educated beyond reason.

Re:What a bunch of loons.

[svallarian]

I believe it's called $cientology.

(Tom cruise please don't sue me)

We Come in Peace - Shoot To Kill

[Doc Ruby]

It's like stabbing a screwdriver into a Swiss watch, to learn how it keeps time.

Re:Star wars (Reagan version)

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. Sure wouldn't want to shoot down an ICBM. Gee, that might be messy.

ICBMs are so much better when they land peacefully at their intended destination.

Next Time

[jmichaelg]

It was a very impressive achievement. We need to do a lot more of these missions so we have an adequate sample of what comets look like because, scoff if you will, eventually earth will be endangered by one. If we have a sample of several comets we can make reasonable plans as to how to deflect them. Right now we have a sample of one.

Next time would be better if:

• There's enough fuel on the mother ship to drop the impactor and then get out of harm's way to turn around to match speeds with the comet. The mother ship can linger over the crater for years watching the newly formed crater evolve.
• The mother could land another drop ship in the newly excavated crater to give us a closeup of the comet's interior.
• Deploy several microprobes that have little seismometers on them. As the comet outgasses, the seimic waves will give us information as to how the comet's interior is structured. Each seismometer could be powered with a small atomic battery which would enable it to operate for years and provide ample power to broadcast the seismometer's readings to the mother ship.
• Make sure the equipment functions properly before it's launched. Blurry hi res photos because someone forgot to calibrate the equipment or parachutes that fail to open over Utah because they're installed backwards aren't ok.

Re:Next Time

[Shamon]

Aww, how cute, someone's playing space scientist today! Soon after typing the above recommendations, Bobby went upstairs, because Mom cooked Mac and Cheese.

NASA and the scientific community are forever in your debt, Bobby!

Re:Next Time

[Anonymous Coward]

I vaguely remember someone saying the impact velocity was like 29,000 miles per hour. So "enough fuel" to turn around and match speeds with the comet would be enough fuel to accelerate to 29,000 mph in the opposite direction. That much fuel fills the big rocket which got the probe up there in the first place; it's like hundreds of tons. Chemical rockets suck. Until something better comes along, not gonna happen. I vote we nuke the next comet, just to see what happens to it - Deflect? Shatter into a million pieces? Of course the politics of that are impossible...

I think it really is a troll

[i41Overlord]

Somebody give this an underrated mod point. This isn't a troll and doesn't deserve a -1.

I think it is a troll. I can understand if someone out there thinks that we should spend money on other things than science and space exploration, but what would that person be on Slashdot for? Slashdot is largely about science and space exploration.

That would be like me belonging to a car modding forum and stating that we shouldn't spend money modding our cars. If I did, the only purpose would be to serve as a troll.

I am curious

[WindBourne]

We are long overdue for a commet hit on this planet. If one is headed this way, how do we deal with it? Unless you understand what it is composed of, you do not know what to do. If it is solid ice, we may be able to divert it so that it goes into orbit. Or we can blow it up. Likewise, if it is metal, we could also divert it, but it will take a great deal more work (or an earlier starting point). Basically, the money that was spent here, may very well allow us to live in a decade. Considering how seceative our government is these days, some of those secrets may very well be, that another comet is on its way (of course, this was designed and built in the 90's, so not likely).

Thousands of voices cried out and were silenced...

[ZoomieDood]

Well, that's how I saw the most relevant Star Wars quote. Okay, so maybe I'm off by a factor of 10^3 or so...

Wierd....but I have to say

[Anonymous Coward]

As I was driving home from a friends where we were watching it... I noticed that everyone in the city was behaving totally crazy.... and I said to myself... this must be a bnad full moon... then I laughed and replied... oh... no full moon... but we did just blow up an asteroid...

who knows? Not that I am buyin their spiel... but folklorically thinking... I used it as an explanation from my subconcious to explain the high wierdness on the roads... having done some neurobiology in finishing up my biochem degreee... sometimes the people in the foil hats can give you some interesting fuel to explore the wierd things with. Or at least a fun digression to make two headed toads with...

now if only we had seen some good tentacles come out after the impact! ia! Ia! cthulu ftaghn!!! ;-)

Collision of heavenly bodies...

[ryanov]

Initially thought to be shaped like a pickle, it came to resemble more of a banana shape as comet Tempel I drew closer.

I dunno about you, but that reads like one of those trashy romance novels to me. I guess that's what one gets when we have a bunch of frustrated mom's basement-dwellers writing the article descriptions. ;)

banana shaped

[vulcanrob]

"...and this, my Leige, is how we know the world to be banana-shaped." -- Sir Bedivere to King Arthur

standard operating procedure

[khallow]

I don't know the details but traditionally the scientists working on an astronomy project whether it be Hubble, Keck, or the VLA have first crack at the data. And the low quality of the pictures may be due to bandwidth. It appears there are two cameras, the "medium resolution" one and a "high resolution" one. Both have built in spectrometers. For pictures in which you can see most or all of the comet at the time of impact, that is from the medium res camera.

The first remark is that they haven't transfered most of the data back yet. So pictures from the lower res camera probably came first. You may be seeing the best available.

Second, it is contradictory to both ask for the "raw" data, and then expect that data to be processed. Automated processing isn't useful scientifically. I doubt they have software smart enough to automatically compensate for the vagaries of the instrument and the data observed.

So it was a guided missile

[crovira]

basically, so we did a very bad thing.

You forgot Discovery!

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

What about all those experiments on the Discov... uh... nevermind.

Dr. Fun's cartoon shows this was a BAD idea!

[antdude]

See Dr. Fun's cartoon.

The probes last thought...

[Cervantes]

Oddly enough, the probes last though before impact was "Oh no, not again."

Sweeeeeet!

[Dasher42]

NASA has totally earned their funding.

Now all the video needs is a slammin' Prodigy soundtrack!

Washing machine...

[PlacidPundit]

I think I know who's responsible for this.

Re:No satellites involved, Soooo...

[M1FCJ]

Oh, weill, since you asked: we call it a thingy!
What else? I wonder what's the classical greek for "thingy"?

match speeds

[phriedom]

The suggestion that the mother ship do a 29,000 mph velocity change and match the trajectory of the comet to continue observing it is such a contrast with the other, reasonable suggestions that I took it for a troll at first. It is just so patently foolish that he MUST be trying to get a reaction. But looking at jmichalg's other posts I see no clear evidence of other trollery. Oh he likes to argue but is it a troll?

So which is it? Are you ignorant or obnoxious?

Re:match speeds

[jmichaelg]

It wasn't a troll so I guess I was obnoxious to use my imagination. I don't think the suggestions were foolish but then again, if they were foolish, I would be the last to know since I made them.

I know we're talking about a huge delta v. I see three ways of achieving it - nuclear propulsion, ion engines or two separate shots.

At today's press conference, one of the investigators said he was surprised by how different this comet turned out to be from Comet Borelli. From earth, the spectroscopy was quite similar but up close, the two comets were quite different. There were some very strange features on this comet that would we would have benefitted from a prolonged observation. My point is that since the small sample of comets we've looked at so far have been so different from each other, we really ought to start gathering solid data on as many comets as we can afford so future generations can cope with the eventual earth collider.

Re:match speeds

[PingPongBoy]

mother ship do a 29,000 mph velocity change

would not be required if there was an auntie ship (sister of the mother) moving at the same speed as the comet

Re:match speeds

[phriedom]

I think I agree with you on the what and the why, just not the how. I think you've got two contradictory goals you've put forward here. 1) Get prolonged observation of a particular comet, OR 2) get up-close observation of as many comets as possible. You can't have both. Rendezvousing with a comet is incredibly more difficult and expensive than intercepting it.

And regarding propulsion: Ion propulsion is very efficient for a small amount of thrust from a very small amount of propellant for a long period of time. It uses electricity from the sun to shoot the propellant out the back one particle at a time. It is great for a long-running probe. It is no good for making a 29,000 mph delta-vee over the course of a few days or weeks

Regarding nuclear propulsion: In theory, it could be a great way to get enormous amounts of energy from small amounts of mass. In practice...well, nobody has put it into practice. And one of the reasons is that when lifting a reactor into orbit or beyond, you've got the potential of spreading highly poisonous and radioactive materials into the atmosphere and/or into populated areas if you have a catastrophic failure during the lift. People outside the US actually get pretty upset even when we are just lifting a nuclear battery on one of our probes, and those are pretty small amounts of radioactive materials. So a nuclear rocket assembled on the surface has a whole host of political and environmental issues associated with it.

One last point, as you've said NASA had problems just intercepting the comet with cameras that were in focus, so attempting the much more difficult and expensive task of a rendezvous might not be a good idea.

Preliminary animation from Planetary Society

[FleaPlus]

The Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla put together a fairly nice animated GIF of the impact and posted it to the Society's official blog:

http://planetary.org.nyud.net:8090/deepimpact/imag es/encounter/animation-small.gif

Her description: OK, I've managed to get back on the raw image website, and I grabbed a whole bunch of the images that we were apparently looking at earlier. I just threw together this little animation, showing mostly Impact Targeting Sensor images, but moving at the end to some Medium Resolution Imager images. Now, I've probably dropped some frames, and these images are smaller than the ones the scientists get to use, but I have to say that this is pretty sweet as it is. I can't wait to see what the scientists produce!

What's with the craters?

[bbc]

I saw craters on the surface of the comet in the movie clip. How did they get there? Did the comet get hit by other comets? :-)

that brings up a good point

[i41Overlord]

I guess it is possible for one to be educated, but not have the intelligence to properly use that knowledge. In other words, a person's brain may be filled with valid information, but that person may not have the ability to sort or discern that information.

I've talked to people before that seemed to know many formulas off the top of their head, but they weren't able to figure out which formula to apply to the problem.

just checking

[wimp_org]

Is it just me or are there other people that where carefully inspecting the last couple of frames of the quicktime movie in a hope to see something 'alien'.

Good thing there wasn't anything there.
We really would have screwed it up bigtime if the last frames contained footage of, for instance, a large intergalactic radio relay station owned by some, not so nice anymore, powerfull alien race.

Wimp

Did it change the comet's path

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you are talking about the earth being possibly endangered by a comet sometime in the future, I thought I'd ask.
Does anybody know if the comet's path was changed?
I think it would be an important consideration with all those people worried about near earth objects.
(Link to NASA site for near earth objects.)
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/

I didn't see any considerations of this in the official announcements from NASA.

Re:Did it change the comet's path

[jmichaelg]

They don't think it'll have any effect. They likened it to a gnat hitting a truck. In any event, if you look at tempel's orbit you'll see that itt doesn't ever come anywhere near the earth. Tempel has a better chance of hitting Mars than us.

During the press conference, they also said that the outgassing could go on for quite awhile, as in possibly months. The thinking is that the comet was in equilibrium and the impact has excavated sufficient material to allow the comet to sublimate over an area somewhere between that of a house and a stadium. How much mass leaves the comet as a result of the impact will affect what happens to the comet's orbit and rotation rate.

Next time...

[shaven_llama]

Let's slam an impactor loaded with a mutli-megaton nuke into one of these mofos. Now that would be interesting.

Pearl Harbour

[refactored]

I thought you earthlings would have learnt from your own history of Pearl Harbour not to wake sleeping giants.

Having destroyed our base on Tempel 1, prepare to meet the wrath of the full Saturnian space fleet.

Hmm, and I note that although you slashdotters have welcomed every other overlord, you haven't welcomed us.

We will remember that.

Some biologists can hack the math

[kaladorn]

Having spent a fair bit of time talking with one of the world's best population modellers for Marine populations, I've seen some of the types of models she works with and I'd surely not call them mathematically simple or inadequate.

My own qualification to assess this is many courses in discrete and continous mathematics as well as numerical methods over the course of 8 years in post-secondary technology and science education.

And while we're on the subject of the people who should think about getting out of science, people with bad attitudes and a streak of elitism might be just as undesirable in the career field....

Congratulations!!!...

[Anonymous Coward]

to the sons of Whitman (Jorge Luis Borges dixit) for this impressive scientific feat. Things like this are the real reasons the world can admire the intelligence and entrepreneurship of you americans.

Bah that's old news

[Scooter]

We brits hit Mars a few months back already!

You remember - it was called "Deep doodoo" or something. :P

It sure does orbit

[everphilski]

Think about it from the frame of reference of the sun. The earth is orbiting the earth. Now this little copper thing the size of an oil barrel (the impactor) and the satellite leave earth orbit **just barely** by increasing its velocity beyond the velocity of the earth. That is, escaping earth's gravitational well. From the point of view of the sun, the impactor and satellite are still orbiting it. It doesnt matter if it did complete an orbit. Unimpeded it would have.

Second point of view: the velocity of the impactor was less than the escape velocity required to escape orbit from the sun. Therefore it had to be orbiting the sun.

Not to mention, astrophysicists and rocket scientists will routinely refer to hyperbolic orbits as orbits, even though they will never complete a revolution. In fact, at infinite time they will approach 180 degrees. But it is perfectly acceptable to consider this an orbit. (consult Brown, "Elements of Spacecraft Design" or any orbital mechanics text)

Who gives a rip about answers.com ... ask a real rocket scientist or astrophysicist. That's the problem with you whipersnappers nowadays... ;)

IAAAE (I am an Aerospace Engineer)

-everphilski-

Re:It sure does orbit

[tomhudson]

Lets try again ...

Without the impactor, Deep Impact isn't Deep Impact - its just another flyby (not that there's anything wrong with that)

The impactor has completed its mission and is no longer an impactor - its just space junk, waiting for some aliens to come along and give us a fine for defacing public property.

The carrier will continue on its orbit, but Deep Impact (the movie, the mission, whatever) is over.

To say that it continues to orbit would be akin to saying that my great-great-great-grandmother twenty times removed is still walking around, because some of her constituent atoms have probably been incorporated into other animals by now.

Semantics ...

Re:It sure does orbit

[everphilski]

Your dead grandmother twenty times removed doesn't walk, but she still orbits the sun with the rest of us on planet earth.

Case closed.

-everphilski-

Re:It sure does orbit

[tomhudson]

Your dead grandmother twenty times removed doesn't walk, but she still orbits the sun with the rest of us on planet earth.

No, she no longer exists. Just as the Deep Impact probe is no longer a probe, and as suck, it is erroneous to say it still orbits the sun.

Couldn't you tell I was baiting from my "just watch people claim ..."? or do I have to spell it out?

Re:It sure does orbit

[everphilski]

The difference here being, that aerospace engineers and astrophysicists will disagree with you, and seeing as this is their line of work... who really cares what you think? I was trying to enlighten you but if you choose to be ignorant... well that's your choice.

-everphilski-

O.k. so now they are playing asteroids in RL,

[sqar]

but they're already cheating: the original asteroids game http://www.klov.com/A/Asteroids.html had no "autonomous navigation system" equipped bullets that were "primed for up to 3 course corrections". That outright unfair!

Bunch of machos!

[j0ris]

(1961) Let's build some rockets, go to the moon... and drive around in a 4x4!

(2005) Let's send up a space ship to an asteroid 80 million miles away... and SHOOT IT!

Re:A mini-animation (correction)

[Tablizer]

Correction: Quicktime is not Jpeg, but uses similar technology. As far as I know, Quicktime and Jpeg generally use about 30 frames a second, which is overkill for a half-dozen frames spread about 1/3 a second apart each (using interpolation and/or filler duplicate frames). Animated GIFs can easily do 1/3 of a second. The drawback of Ani GIFs is that they don't compress across frames, only within a frame. Thus, they compress less effectively when you have hundreds or thousands of frames. But that is not the case here.

I don't know the actual time between frames for this movie, but generally you will have to speed up space images from the original pace to see the pattern of movement.

This is only the beginning:

[Anonymous Coward]

Now the Jocks will fear us, my geeky brothers!

Boy did we have fun in Hawaii.

[Shag]

My wife and daughter went to the outreach event at U of Hawaii - Hilo campus. I was handling all the video and communications at a parallel event at Maui Community College. There were also events at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, and on Waikiki Beach.

I've read that the Waikiki Beach event attracted 10,000 people. I'm not sure how many usually show up for the free "Sunset on the Beach" movies, though, so I don't know what the delta was there. I don't have numbers for Bishop either.

Hilo and Maui each had hundreds of attendees, were standing (or sitting on the floor) room only, had to open extra rooms for NASA TV streams, and still had people standing outside looking in the doors. The Keck headquarters in Waimea got about twice as many people as could fit inside.

Of course, anybody with enough bandwidth can watch NASA TV, but in our main program space (far too small, alas!) we also had a few other attractions:

• Lots of free posters, stickers, etc.
• Professional astronomers Shadia Habbal, J.D. Armstrong and Jonathan Williams fielding questions and, in Jon's case, giving a presentation.
• Live video links (via iChat AV) with a group of students from Hawaii and Iceland who were one floor above us, remotely operating the Faulkes telescope on Haleakala as part of a workshop with educators from the US, Iceland and the UK.
• Display of up-to-the-minute images off Faulkes. (Yes, the comet got a whole lot brighter!)
• Live video links with, and a presentation from, Mike Martin of Boeing (which provided the rocket), who was on the summit of Haleakala.
• Live video chat with Mike Maberry, Assistant Director for Maui at the U. of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, also on the summit of Haleakala.
• Live video chat with Bill Giebink of the IfA, who was on the summit of Haleakala to keep an eye on Faulkes. (And who, I might note, showed up on video with his granddaughter sitting on his shoulders.)
• Live video chat with Glenn at the Smithsonian-Harvard-Taiwan submillimeter array on Mauna Kea
• Live video chat with Hiroko at the Caltech submillimeter observatory on Mauna Kea
• A couple brief bits of live streaming video from Japan's Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea.

The Maui News said something about "live television feeds" - nope, all the people we were talking to were over iChat AV. :)

Re:A mini-animation (correction)

[mfnickster]

Correction: Quicktime is not Jpeg, but uses similar technology. As far as I know, Quicktime and Jpeg generally use about 30 frames a second.

I don't know if you're talking about "Motion JPEG" or MPEG, but both of those and Quicktime can have variable frame rates.

Quicktime can use multiple codecs as well, including Motion JPEG, so you really can't tell anything about the movie's frame rate, resolution, color depth etc. just by the fact that it's a Quicktime movie file - it's just a container format for different types of tracks. Any given track may use a codec that is similar to JPEG or very different, it's up to the author.

Just FYI!

- MFN

So when can we get ...

[qualico]

...a rover onto a comet?

Sure looks like a great place to explore after your projectile opens it up like a jaw breaker.
Also, have a rover capable of sending out probes whenever the comet travels near some object worthy of investigation.

Pathetic moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be a Slashdot regular. I did moderation and meta-moderation many times.

I can't remember if the moderation was this bad. It's pathetic.

+4 mod points for the original post is a joke.

To his credit, NewbieProgrammerMan has the decency to admit his mistake.

Re:A mini-animation (correction)

[Tablizer]

You are right: MPEG. Acronym OD caught up to me. And you may be right about Quicktime's multiple codecs also. It just seems people who make QT movies don't optimize such things very well, creating long transfer times. It might also be that the common codecs don't support slower frame rates very well even if it is an official feature. I had that problem once with an MPEG player.

Re:No satellites involved, Soooo...

[Dunbal]

Tri-quarter?