posted                   

quote:

---

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.

---

How

Posts: 2756 | Registered: Jul 2002  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                   

quote:

---

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

---

I dont really know far the average telescope can see?

Posts: 2756 | Registered: Jul 2002  |  IP: Logged |