OK, I was looking at the Deep Impact mission, slated for December, (and i put my name in to be put on the spacecraft!) and thought...since the craft is suppose to land on the comet Tempal-1 (i believe), and basically create a crater. Question: How do we know that the spacecraft will slow down enough to land and "create a crater", and not become part of the crater..in form of tiny little peices...rather than start orbiting the comet?

Also...who else signed up to have their name put on the Spacecraft?

The spacecraft is in two pieces: one hits the comet, and the other flies past. More information - see the fact sheet.

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Sounds like a lark. There a link to submit my name with, or is it too late to get in?

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But he that sows lies in the end shall not lack of a harvest, and soon he may rest from toil indeed while others reap and sow in his stead. -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

Go to the Deep Impact home page and find the link "Send your name to a comet". You have until Jan. 31st to get it in.

The cost is only $400,000,000.00.

The disk will most likely be destroyed when the impactor hits the comet at about 5 miles per second. I think they should include a second disk on the flyby craft, since it will go on into solar orbit, where it should remain forever.

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I'm not a scientist, but I play one on the internet.
http://www.rrac.org

Also, they are planning on having a contest to name the two spacecraft. No word on when it will start.

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I'm not a scientist, but I play one on the internet.
http://www.rrac.org

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But he that sows lies in the end shall not lack of a harvest, and soon he may rest from toil indeed while others reap and sow in his stead. -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

I signed up too.

As mentioned, and as described on the NASA/JPL website, the spacecraft will release an impactor which will slam into the comet and create a crater (destroyed). The spacecraft, safely sitting back several hundred miles, will check out what kind of crater is created and what kind of debris is ejected/exposed.

Its a NASA example of an old geological tool. Take your hammer out and smack it into the sample. High-energy physicists as well as 6 year olds looking at clockworks use similar techniques.

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One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Comet Crashing Mission Prepped For Launch

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Deep Impact Arrives in Florida

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Sure would suck if they miss by a few inches...

Didn't Genesis just complete a deep impact?

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Is that your idea of "comedy", wacky?? It's not very funny...maybe if you had left off the smilie...

Aw, c'mon Guys ...

After all the Fun we had, Talking about Lithographic Breaking?

It was Funny, in a Tragic Sort of Way.

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Interesting typo there.

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I don't see Genesis as a crash, but an ambitious attempt to harvest the largest piece of space dust it could find.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

In the Slashdot discussion of the crash, some wag posted, "The preliminary findings from the Genesis mission show that the Sun is composed largely of dirt."

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:-?

If we cannot laugh at our mistakes we are doomed to cry over them.

I work for NASA and am very familiar with loss and tragedy. While The Genesis mission was a failure in that it crashed the only true loss was money and time. I would never make jokes about the loss of life that we have seen. Though I have heard many of them, I consider those to be in very bad taste, and a sign of a sick mind [-X .

Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.

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Based on the condition that you are incapable of moving at a high velocity with large animals of the canine species, then you shall be required to remain in a location that is in the general vicinity of the front door of your domicile.

What I don't understand about Deep Impact is that the woo-woos have not started protesting about it, on the basis that there is a danger we will inadvertently alter the comet's orbit so it hits Earth. :wink:

(Of course, another woo-woo faction will argue that it is a desperate attempt to collide the comet with Planet X and prevent that encountering Earth.)

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Fin
Skep-ti-cult® member #488-28303-790

I keep getting a visual of the impactor going straight through the comet, like an arrow through a snowdrift!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Anyone aware that the impactor is actually a 12cm telescope?

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When I am done here I think I will go create something from metal.

My first thought was, "Someone must have really hated their TASCO," but it's a real instrument.

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Sshh! Don't give them any ideas!

At 10 km/sec, an arrow hitting a snowdrift WOULD make a sizable explosion.

Anyone know if there are any estimates of the magnitude, from Earth, of the gas/dust cloud the DI will kick up next July? I notice that it will be observable in quite small tetescopes.

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Fin
Skep-ti-cult® member #488-28303-790

why does it seem like NASA always tries to have stuff happen around July 4?
is that their way of celebrating Independence day- by making all the engineers come to work on a federal holoday?

AFAIK they usually try to avoid weekends and holidays, as this means increased costs. The tour-planning software for Cassini puts these costs into consideration in tour planning and tries to avoid major events happening on holidays.

Harald

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

Deep Impact Launch Delayed-Software and Metallurgical Concerns

An improperly heat treated interstage will need to be replaced. This shouldn't push the mission launch past its Jan 28th deadline.

The term "as built" really brought back some memories. Back in the old manufacturing days for submarine power units, "as-built" reviews were part of every transition from component to subassembly to main assembly to final assembly. Doing the reviews in this manner ensured no faulty component would get too far along in the process and require an expensive tear down/disassembly. But at least here Boeing performed the review before launch

The there's that quote
Sorry, but the "767 airliner running into a..." part made me cringe.

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NASA Set to Launch First Comet Impact Probe December 14 press release



OK... as long as you realize Comet Tempel 1 is the 767 and the impactor is the mosquito.

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I knew that after reading the entire quote. But just before I got to the word "mosquito" it caused an unpleasant sensation. That's why I omitted "mosquito" in the quoted section.

BTW, if you've ever seen an electron microscope image of a mosquito's proboscis, you know that they can have "deep impact" too. 8)

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Cometary Big Dig

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