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NASA's plans do indeed have something to do with a birth: not just the birth of the United States, but our entire solar system.

This July 4th, NASA is going to smash a comet, and observe the material that flies off in the explosion. The name of this mission is, appropriately enough, Deep Impact, and when it whops into the comet Tempel 1 this summer, the resulting smash will be equivalent to blowing up 4.8 tons of TNT, and is expected to blow a football stadium-sized crater about 7 stories deep into the dirty ice of the comet.

Up until now, we've only been able to study the material near the surface of comets — the stuff blown off in the tail or, more recently, a few near encounters with the icy body itself. But the surface material has been altered over time: blasted by the Sun's heat each time a comet makes its rounds through our solar system. If we want to see a pristine sample of the stuff of our early selves, we've got to dig down. Or even better, blast down!

The idea behind the Deep Impact mission is this: send a spacecraft to intercept the comet Tempel 1and launch some ballistic object at it to carve out a crater deep enough to get down to the pure, unaltered comet material beneath the surface. While that's going on, observe the chemistry of the comet before, during, and after the impact, and study the structure of the crater for clues about how the comet is made up.

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How
 

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Posted by Eaquae Legit (Member # 3063) on :
 


WHEEE!
 

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Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
 
So we're going around destroying bits of the solar system now?!
 

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Posted by Altáriël of Dorthonion (Member # 6473) on :
 
human nature...
We don't know,
we destroy...
 

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Posted by Portabello (Member # 7710) on :
 
And through destroying, we know more.

It's the best of both worlds!


 

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Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
 
"Well, guess we already blew up everything on this planet...time to move on," he imagined someone saying.
 

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Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
 
I hope I can get some decent instructions on how to view this thing. Also, I hope it happens at night. If I could actually see the impact it would be way cooler than anything else I've seen through my telescope.
 

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Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
 
From the article:

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Unfortunately, you'll need a telescope to see it, as the explosions will take place over 268 million miles away

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I dont really know far the average telescope can see?
 

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Posted by Portabello (Member # 7710) on :
 
millions of light-years, if the object's bright enough.
 

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Posted by T_Smith (Member # 3734) on :
 
Future news report:

"The trajectory of Tempel 1 was drastically changed due to the scientific endeavors of NASA. The resulting trajectory is now predicted as Earth, and ironically has a 90 percent chance of having NASA head quarters be the exact center of the objects impact. Scientists are now scrambling."
 

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Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
 
Yeah, I'm invisioning that to be the plot of a film coming to a theatre near you.
 

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Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
 
That sounds like something my one-year-old would think up. "What is it? I don't know. Let's knock a hole in it and see!"
 

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Posted by Fishtail (Member # 3900) on :
 
Well, we dissected worms, and frogs, and some eventually graduated to human cadavers. Why is this any different? Lewis and Clark sent back samples of all the new wildlife they discovered west of the Mississippi...badgers and mule deer and birds. When the object of your study is moving at a million miles a second, and you want to know what it's made of, what else would you do? We don't have Star Trek sensors yet.
 

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Posted by MyrddinFyre (Member # 2576) on :
 
Something seems really scary about this whole thing.... I mean, I wouldn't want people shooting ducks that were flying over my head.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
What if the comet has an alien observation center at the core? We could be declaring war unintentionally.
 

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Posted by Portabello (Member # 7710) on :
 
Let's hope so.
 

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Posted by LilBee91 (Member # 7475) on :
 
I have a telescope.
The sky will probably be perfectly clear.
It will look awesome.
And it will be way to light out all night to see a single thing.
*curses Alaska summer*
*seriously considers going to Antarctica for the Fourth of July*
*decides against it...airfare is probably too much*

[ April 14, 2005, 10:57 PM: Message edited by: LilBee91 ]
 

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Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
 
Is this real?
 

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Posted by Tater (Member # 7035) on :
 
This should be cooler than that time I saw Mars.
 

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Posted by Boon (Member # 4646) on :
 
From www.nasa.gov

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/main/index.html
 

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Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
 
This is awesome! I hope they learn something from this that will help with our eventual asteroid defense program.

Don't worry about hurting things.... comets are icy snowballs whose usual home is way out past Pluto where it's extremely cold and very dark. Every so often something perturbs the orbit of one of these things and they fall inward toward the Sun. It's just a big snowball, miniature compared to the size of the Earth. It's doomed to melt and evaporate in the warmer regions of the inner solar system anyway. And the trajectory is not going to be anywhere close to Earth.

We need to understand the solar system, to learn as much as we can about it, in order to get ready to go out and inhabit it. This is a great mission!
 

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