On July 3rd/4th the world of science will get a present from an object too far away for us to be able to see it with the naked eye. But some eyes will be watching it, and they will be watching it closely and carefully. NASA’s Deep Impact will reach comet Tempel 1 in an attempt to learn as much as possible from this 333 million dollar mission which consists in sending a 1 meter wide impactor straight into the heart of the dead cold celestial body. The goal of this is to create a crater in the comet which will then be observed by the mother space ship which in turn will feed the images back to JPL. Hopefully, these images will help scientists learn a couple of things about comets, such as internal composition and origin.
Meanwhile, NASA released a video with the projected event. Several aspects pictured are intentionally misinterpreted (such as distance, velocity and environment). I’m quite curious about the outcome of the mission (especially the post-impact events when the space ship will cross it’s way through hell near the comet’s debris).
More on this: http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/
Where is Deep Impact now? And where is Tempel 1? Here: http://deepimpact.umd.edu/amateur/where_is.shtml
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