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Deep Impact Probe to Look for Earth-sized Planets
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "NASA has given University of Maryland scientists the green light to fly the Deep Impact probe to Comet Hartley 2. The spacecraft will pass Earth on New Year's Eve at the beginning of a more than two-and-a-half-year journey to Hartley 2. During the first six months of the journey to Hartley 2, they will use the larger of the two telescopes on Deep Impact to search for Earth-sized planets around five stars selected as likely candidates for such planets. Upon arriving at the comet, Deep Impact will conduct an extended flyby of Hartley 2 using all three of the spacecraft's instruments — two telescopes with digital color cameras and an infrared spectrometer."
I remember doing this for work. We needed to create a select element with a few thousand items that needed to be added dynamically based on an array of data. The fastest way that worked across all browsers was to concatenate a strings of tags using Array.push and join() followed by adding the string to the select element with innerHTML. This was about 10 times faster in IE as opposed to adding option items using DOM methods.
Why just Earth sized? Uranus sized is just as good as any.
This is very exciting and many astronomers are confident of quick results from previous studies of system B1173 in Galaxy Priordan[bbc.co.uk]
I'm glad that they are going to be hitting a couple of birds with the same stone. NASA really needs to get as much bang out of every buck as they can.
I'm frustrated that the pace of space exploration is so slow. There is so much we don't know about our own neighborhood. By now we should have an orbiter around every planet and major moon in this system, and the cost of doing so would be tiny in comparison to the data gathered.
I...I'm attacking the darkness!
Is there anything we can currently discover apart from size?
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
...when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
Whats the size of the telescope on this probe? It can't be anywhere near as big as Hubble, and even though it maybe going further out into the so;ar system, thats not going to make it significantly closer to any extra solar planets.
With a name like Deep Impact wouldn't make sense for it to look for any near earth asteroids or comets that might be coming our way.
Mod down appropriately.
What looks better on the tube --- enemies getting their asses kicked and old people looking neglected or the 1 minute orgasmic thrill of a rocket booster launch. Like a firework, a quick flame and WHOOSH, gone from view.
Ok. So here's the plan. We invent an enemy. We stage an attack on a few of our bases, and blame it on "Them". Then we set up some mock cities in Utah, or Alaska, or somewhere, and blow these "enemy" military installations to bits (on camera, of course). Make it look like we're liberating the people from some nasty "evil empire". We then funnel the "war funds" to space exploration.
Basically just like what's happening now, except the money goes to NASA instead of Bush & Company.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
What I couldn't decipher is how long will the probe be in close proximity to the comet? On opposing vectors? Or will the slingshot put it alongside the same trajectory as the comet coming up from behind? If the latter, now that's a pretty cool set of calculations, and should make for a nice long study of the comet.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
I want to know how they "lost" the first target comet...and where that sucker is.
Impetuous! Homeric!
For those of you who miss it on the main web-site, Ball Aerospace developed most of the scientific instruments. They are becoming pivotal to many of today's space-based observation instruments. Details on their involvement with Deep Impact are here.
Say I'm enclosed in a steel box, with a delicious cake and a healthy appetite. To an outside observer, before she confirms whether or not the cake has been eaten by looking inside the box, would I be simultaneously having my cake and eating it, too?
Just wondering...
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
One of these days, I'm going to "build" the little fold-up paper model of it that's at home...
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
http://www.newpath4.com/tellingthetruthaboutantigravityfromanonscientistnewtimelineviewof12182007.pdf
Exactly! By your link => you have really expressed everyone's feelings. Space Travel plods along slower than sin. I wrote a webpage just two days ago addressing people's frustrations over Space Travel. I suppose we would have it if we all signed up for a tour in Iraq, got all trained up, passed their physical tests. But the reason that has to be is because they insist on propulsion engines that presses astronauts into the seat from excess G's on liftoff. If a space engine(s) was developed that lifted the lightweight-alloy-and-plastic/foam spacecraft home easily from the ground they wouldn't be able to force everyone through their Sign-Up-for-Iraq (French Foreign Legion, Russkies, Patrol Boys and Space Cowboys) filter. Old people could travel their remaining years through Outer Space instead of clogging up Old Age homes. Perhaps we need to drop back, punt, -&- re-write our Equation by listening to the "ancients" who lived before us; as in Bible writers.
Industrial Age 2 + How-to Stop Malignant Cancers.
The Kepler Probe, launched in Feb 2009, will aim its gigapixel eye at the same region of space for 3.5 years and look for brief dimmings of stars that are planetary transit eclipses. It's estimated that several hundred such events will be observed, including ones as small as Earth. The size and orbital paramters of new planets can be determined in many cases.
Named after Nina?