Deep Impact Will Hit Soon
Deep Impact will hit it’s target, the comet Temple 1, at 1:52am EDT on Monday, July 4th. The 370kg impacter has already been released from the spacecraft and now it’s just waiting for the comet to plow into it. The goals of the mission are:
1. Observe how the crater forms
2. Measure the crater’s depth and diameter
3. Measure the composition of the interior of the crater and its ejecta
4. Determine the changes in natural outgassing produced by the impact
Basically, they want to know what the comet is made out of, so they’re going to hit it at 23,000 mph to create a crater 25 meters deep so they can study it. It should be interesting.
I don’t know how I keep on coming across these spacecraft that are about to do things…. I didn’t even find out about this one on any of the sites I’m usually at… I just stumbled across it a couple of days ago somehow. This stuff interests me, but I don’t follow it all that much. I imagine by this time the story may have hit slashdot and perhaps even google news though..
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I had totally forgot that all of this was going on. Thanks for the re-cap. This stuff interests the heck out of me too. Nice blog; I’ll be keeping my eye on it.