Deep Impact Mission May Be Extended

SeaDour writes "The famous Deep Impact mission, which in 2005 launched a projectile in the path of comet Tempel 1, may be extended by NASA. The proposal is to slingshot the probe around the Earth as it passes by at the end of this year, putting it on a trajectory to reach comet Boethin in December 2008. Scientists want to see if the strange composition and behavior of Tempel 1 is more common than they had previously assumed. (The probe only had one projectile though, so we will not see another brilliant man-made explosion on this comet.) Additionally, while the probe is en route to the comet, researchers will point its on-board telescope at known exosolar planets to determine the compositions of their atmospheres."

Comments

Re:US Only

[spottedkangaroo]

A very small percentage of your tax dollars anyway. Compare the cost of that spacecraft to a day of operations in iraq.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

[whatme]

I think examples of this are what we should petition congress to INCREASE funding for NASA. The simple fact is NASA has developed a culture to maximize their return on projects (and succeeding). Give them some more funds to accomplish the additional programs they have backlogged. If they can continue this culture, we all benefit.

Too bad the rest of the government can't follow this lead.

a harebrained idea...

[gsn]

If wonder if they'd consider using the probe itself as the projectile and just monitoring with Spitzer...

The Obstacle to Understanding Comets is the Theory

[pln2bz]

Despite numerous observations of comets that are anomalous to the mainstream traditional theory that comets have something to do with the early formation of the planets, NASA continues to prioritize the theory over the data. We already possess all of the data we need to understand what it is that makes comets tick. The real problem is that neither NASA nor the space enthusiasts (on this forum at least) like the answer because it is a square peg in a round theory of the universe:

http://www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pdf

Comets are covered in great depth in Don Scott's "The Electric Sky" and Wallace Thornhill's upcoming book "The Electric Universe", as well as on their thunderbolts site at:

http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/00subjectx.htm#C omets

Some people will be surprised to learn that Wallace Thornhill accurately predicted the results of the Deep Impact Mission -- results which continue to confound NASA and the astrophysical community to this day. But predictions mean little these days so long as they are disconfirming to the theories we developed decades ago. And NASA continues to treat the anomalous data regarding comets as an issue that has no significant bearing upon the bigger cosmological picture.

It's clear by now that NASA's purpose is not to objectively interpret our observations of the universe, but rather to specifically find data that confirms the Big Bang and stellar evolution. They've stated as much. One thing is clear: comets will keep them very busy in this regard.

With regards to comets, the burden is no longer on the EU Theorists. They've made a prediction that came to pass. The burden is now upon the astrophysical community to read their theory of how comets work and to consider the details of the prediction and outcome of that prior mission. How is it that Thornhill could have known what would happen with Deep Impact? How could he have known about the pre-impact flash? Nobody was predicting anything like that. Can anybody really argue that this was by pure chance? Or is it possible that he's right?