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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."
I feel this would be a very good use of my tax dollars - getting a second mission from the same spacecraft.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
An asteroid is headed for us and what little money NASA has they are spending it on blowing up rocks. I'm glad you people are so calm about this plainly spelled out emergency. Fact is, NASA can't do anything against a 2 mile long rock. They should invest all that money in bomb shelters for the general population- and stop pretending to be anything more than scientific children.
Your hubris are going to cost us lives. But they'll be dead, so nothing to worry about really- huh.
Too bad the rest of the government can't follow this lead.
Just think about it for a second...
But it's out of projectiles, and won't blow up anything, so this time, many Boethins WON'T die to give us this information.
/me ducks. ;-p
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Now is the time for all good Americans to stand up and say "NO!" to the political hacks at NASA (appointed by the criminal Bush regime) who want to steal Earth's precious angular momentum. And for what? A so-called scientific mission costing millions of dollars? There are millions of starving children on Earth, and they can't eat spectroscopic data!
Using a gravitational slingshot around the Earth to accelerate this craft puts every human being on Earth at risk of falling space junk! And slowing Earth's orbit around the sun will lengthen our year - and you know what that means. Yep, more global warming, as more sunshine will reach Earth every year after this spacecraft passes.
No! We must speak up and not allow this mission to proceed! Not in our name!
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
They should have put a bitchin' bad multi-barrel probe launcher on that thing. Or maybe a machine-gun belt full of them.
See, this is why NASA should hire gamers to design their space probes.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
If wonder if they'd consider using the probe itself as the projectile and just monitoring with Spitzer...
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Maybe they could hit Halley's comet in 1986.
If they do try they've failed already. We just don't know how they screwed it up yet.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
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:
f
C omets
http://www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pd
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#
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?
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.