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| Sunday, 17 July 2005 |
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Junior Observer |  |
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Cosmic smash-up : A milestone in space missions A space probe hit its comet target recently during a mission conducted by NASA. Scientists hope this will reveal clues as to how the solar system formed. It was the first time a spacecraft touched the surface of a comet. According to mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, the successful strike was 83 million miles away from Earth. The mission cost over US $ 333 million. It was a milestone for the U.S. space agency, which hopes the experiment will answer basic questions about the origins of the solar system. The cosmic smash-up did not significantly alter the comet's orbit around the Sun and according to NASA, the experiment does not pose any danger to Earth. An image by the mother-ship showed a bright spot in the lower section of the comet where the collision took place, hurl a cloud of debris into space. When the dust settles, scientists hope to peer inside the comet's frozen core, a composite of ice and rock left over from the early solar system. Scientists had compared the suicide journey to standing in the middle of the road and being hit by a semi-truck roaring at 23,000 miles per hour. After its release, the battery-powered probe tumbled in free flight toward the comet and flew on its own without human help during the critical two hours before the crash, firing its thrusters to get the perfect aim of the comet nucleus. Soon after the probes crash on the comet's sunlit side, the mothership prepared to approach Tempel 1 to peer into the crater site and send more data back to Earth. The spacecraft planned to fly within 310 miles of the comet before it activated its dust shields to protect itself from a blizzard of debris. Comets are frozen balls of dirty ice, rock and dust that orbit the Sun. A giant cloud and dust collapsed to create the Sun and planets about 4.5 billion years ago, and comets formed from the left-over building blocks of the solar system. Deep Impact launched on January 12 from Cape Canaveral on a six-month, 268 million-mile voyage toward Tempel 1. In what scientists say is a coincidence, the spacecraft shares the same name as the 1998 movie about a comet hurtling toward Earth. No other space mission has flown this close a comet. In 2004, NASA's Stardust craft flew within 147 miles of Comet Wild 2 en route back to Earth carrying interstellar dust samples. |
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