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Cometary Fireworks Go Off Without Hitch 374
PingXao writes "The JPL Deep Impact mission has successfully slammed a sattelite into Tempel 1 at 23,000 mph. (37,000 kph). The autonomous navigation system was primed for up to 3 course corrections in the final 2 hours of flight but only had to execute two of them. The second was so small - expending less than a pound of propellant - that impact would have occurred without it. Initially thought to be shaped like a pickle, it came to resemble more of a banana shape as comet Tempel I drew closer. Impact was estimated to have released 19 Gigajoules of energy, or the equivalent of 4.5 tons of TNT."
Where are the Stars in the pictures? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures? (Score:4, Informative)
Pedantic answer: orbit == complete circuit. It didn't do even half an orbit http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/factsheet-t ext.html [nasa.gov]
To say it was orbiting around the sun when it didn't even go half-way would be like me saying I walked around the block when I just went to the corner, or that Alan Shepards sub-orbital flight was an "orbit". What it did was sub-orbital.
Definition http://www.answers.com/orbit&r=67 [answers.com]
Now, it might be nit-picking, but it didn't "revolve around" any body - its "orbit" was really just an arc that started and completed in under 1 revolution. If it had taken 1 or more revolutions to complete the mission, then you could have said it had, in fact, orbited the sun. Pedantic, but wtf, this is slashdot, and this is the sort of "angels on a pinhead" argument that gets people to biteRe:Where are the Stars in the pictures? (Score:3, Informative)
This was definitely not suborbital. A suborbital path around the sun would require an intersection with the sun's surface at some future point. An orbit like that would require more rocket fuel than it would take to e
It sure does orbit (Score:3, Informative)
Second point of view: the velocity of
Re:Where are the Stars in the pictures? (Score:3, Informative)
The GP post might have gotten the words wrong. It was probably supposed to be "similarity". For the record in case anyone's wondering, it's nothing to do with atmosphere -- it's photographic exposure time. Stars are ve
And the real question is ... (Score:5, Funny)
Seems like NASA has missed the chance to answer this profound question raised by Sci-Fi enthusiast by not putting a microphone onboard the flyby probe.
Re:And the real question is ... (Score:4, Informative)
Nope, you need a medium to transmit vibrations. Whales do just fine with a fluid, in fact a fluid is better, because it's denser. More molecules in closer contact. They "talk" to each other across hundreds of miles using low frequencies. That would be the whales. Molecules don't talk. They don't even "talk." Don't anthropomorphize molecules. They hate that.
Solids work great too. A microphone on the probe would have recorded a sound.
A microphone next to the probe would not, because because an insufficiently dense medium, like a gas, to carry the vibration.
KFG
Re:i'm being picky, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Definition [answers.com]:
fluid
n.
A continuous, amorphous substance whose molecules move freely past one another and that has the tendency to assume the shape of its container; a liquid or gas.
A mini-animation (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A mini-animation (Score:5, Informative)
I think it contains what are by far the best, and closest pictures of a comet nucleus - and I've no idea if it's from 'final' data yet. I gather there's a lot left to download from the flyby probe, but was it a Huygens-Cassini style relay setup or was impactor data received directly on Earth? If it's the latter, I suppose there isn't much chance of retrieving any more of the close-up data, as the delicate hardware stuck to the impactor's copper mass must have made quite a splat...
Re:A mini-animation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A mini-animation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A mini-animation (Score:3, Insightful)
Ugh is right--a person pretending to be a scientist who can't do math.
Really, please, do the world a favour and get out of the sciences entirely if you aren't willing or able to learn the basic tools of the trade.
Biology is currently in a serious mess because of the huge amount of genomics and proteomics data being generated by people who don't have the mathematical ability to analyze it, or the scie
Re:A mini-animation (Score:3, Funny)
I think we have a potential solution to all those orbital corrections on the ISS. We simply need to find one of those "fixed points in space" and anchor the station to one, thus keeping it forever still. Additionally, we'll be able to figure out which way the earth/sun/galaxy/universe/etc is moving once and for all once we see which way the station flies off after being anchored...
(Yes, I'm guessing (and hoping) that you were being sarcastic about that one. I just couldn't resist
Preliminary animation from Planetary Society (Score:3, Insightful)
http://planetary.org.nyud.net:8090/deepimpact/imag es/encounter/animation-small.gif [nyud.net]
Her description: OK, I've managed to get back on the raw image website, and I grabbed a whole bunch of the images that we were apparently looking at earlier. I just threw together this little animation, showing mostly Impact Targeting Sensor images, but moving at the end to some Medi
PWND!!11 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:PWND!!11!!!111!!!oneoneone (Score:2, Funny)
Those bastards!
No satellites involved (Score:2, Informative)
Next! (Score:2)
Re:Next! (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean the Rosetta [esa.int] mission?
Currently en route to a close rendezvous with comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, to be followed by releasing a lander (which will use a harpoon to cling to the surface). It was in a position to make distant observations of comet Tempel for the current fireworks show.
It won't do what you describe but will instead take a roundabout route that will allow it to basically sneak up on the comet.
Oh, and it's European, not American :-)
Re:No satellites involved (Score:2)
Re:No satellites involved (Score:2)
Re:No satellites involved (Score:2)
Re:No satellites involved (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No satellites involved (Score:3, Interesting)
The sibling post of this one, which says the object needs to be in orbit in order to be a satellite, gives the correct definition of a satellite.
A block of copper can thus be a satellite, but the impactor was clearly not orbiting the comet.
You see?
Re:No satellites involved (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No satellites involved (Score:2)
Seems a Lot Smoother Than I Would Have Thought (Score:4, Insightful)
Ugliest Dog I Ever Saw [whattofix.com]
Re: Seems a Lot Smoother Than I Would Have Thought (Score:3, Interesting)
> With all that outgassing, you would think a comet's surface would be a lot more sharp -- full of crevasses and ridges (like it was on Deep Impact) But this one seemed almost smooth, like an asteroid.
Some of the final picture before impact showed what looked like big chunks, perhaps glued together by snow.
I wonder whether the outgassing weakens it enough to "melt" to a new configuration each time it passes the sun.
Result (Score:5, Interesting)
"It was like mosquito hitting a 747. What we've found is that the mosquito didn't splat on the surface, it's actually gone through the windscreen."
The photos too, are quite amazing. A huge amount of stellar dust, ice, and rock exploded out of Tempel 1's surface. All from the impact of a probe just the size of a washing machine.
Over the following few days, the second module of the mission will further analyse the materials ejected from the comet, and it is believed scientists will discover much about the creation of the universe (some of the material hasn't been disturbed in over 4 billion years) and the composition of comets in general over the next few months as they complete their analysis of this great event.
Re: Result (Score:5, Insightful)
> This is quite likely the finest result Nasa has had for a long time.
Ignoring a couple of rovers on Mars...
Re: Result (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Result (Score:3, Funny)
>> This is quite likely the finest result Nasa has had for a long time.
> Ignoring a couple of rovers on Mars...
Apparently NASA reused, in this impactor, software they had for the Polar Lander [space.com].
har har.
(And, as a repentant soul, congratulations NASA on this great bull's eye).
Re:Result (Score:2, Informative)
I think this analogy is quite poor. This may be true in term of dimension, however, certainly not in term of density. I think a massive bolt (with a similar kinetic energy) would be more problematic for a 747 than a mosquito.
Re:Result (Score:2)
Before the impact I wondered if the impactor would disappear into a big snowbank with hardly any light show. I was wrong. It clearly hit rock solid ice and (probably) made a relatively small crater.
Nothing delicate about old Tempel 1
Re:Result (Score:3)
Don't forget the gigantic success of the Cassini-Huygens mission from January which was a huge success, partly for NASA and the Mars Exploratioon Rovers which are still strolling around Mars!
Re:Result (Score:2)
Re:Result (Score:2)
Washing machines are heavy, and (with the exception of the concrete in the base) they're not especially dense. This thing would have had tremendous kinetic energy at the speed it was travelling at relative to Tempel 1, and was designed to hit it hard. That it was an impressive collision really shouldn't be surprising.
(But then, I have a degree in Physics, so I'm used to thinking about this sort of thing, I guess...)
Re:Result (Score:3, Interesting)
I've encountered plenty of mosquitos, but I've never encountered a mosquito MADE OF SOLID METAL.
I think being made of solid metal instead of squishy goo might make all the difference.
Last Words (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder if it will be friends with me?
Pearl Harbour (Score:3, Funny)
Having destroyed our base on Tempel 1, prepare to meet the wrath of the full Saturnian space fleet.
Hmm, and I note that although you slashdotters have welcomed every other overlord, you haven't welcomed us.
We will remember that.
4.5 TONS of TNT? (Score:2)
OR... (Score:4, Funny)
Or the equivalent of a Supersized meal from McDonalds...
impact seen from Lowell Observatory (Score:4, Interesting)
There was supposed to be a Kaboom! (Score:4, Funny)
Oh Well. Guess next time I will have to use an Illudium-Q-36 Space Modulator.
(toddles off)
Re:There was supposed to be a Kaboom! (Score:2)
Re:Get it right (Score:2)
(tig)
What's all the fuss about. (Score:5, Funny)
NASA have proven quite adept at smashing space craft into various celestial bodies.
Oh hang on...maybe they weren't suppose to do that!
Astrologist Sues NASA over comet crash (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200507/s1406
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/07/04/deep
Re:Astrologist Sues NASA over comet crash (Score:5, Funny)
Anyway, if she is good at her job, surely she should have seen this coming? Even I knew it was going to happen, and my crystal ball hasn't worked right for years.
Ob Monty Python quote (Score:3, Funny)
Sir Bedevere: ...and that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana shaped.
King Arthur: This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.
(Okay! I know it is not about the Earth, but anyway...)
Size (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe the Unix "units" program will do it for me.
Let's see:
$ units
1989 units, 71 prefixes, 32 nonlinear units
You have: washingmachine
You want: volkswagen
* 0.25
/ 4
You have: washingmachine
You want: librariesofcongress
* 0.0001
/ 10000
Ah, now I can visual it.
Re:Size (Score:2, Funny)
9/11 for comet people (Score:4, Funny)
Re:9/11 for comet people (Score:3, Funny)
Experiment result (Score:5, Funny)
Tempel: 1
Impactor: 0
Partly Offtopic (Score:5, Funny)
http://edition.cnn.com/ [cnn.com] International headline: 'NASA probe collides with comet'
So CNN has an official policy of only providing cheesy headlines to Americans? That's a policy I can live with though.
Re:Partly Offtopic (Score:5, Funny)
"After intense negotiations, the comet has been deemed a threat to national security. The freedom-hating comet bowed down to the vastly superior US forces. The White House says that this is a direct response to 9/11."
Oblig. Monty Python Quote (Score:2)
It had to be said...
Go Team... (Score:2, Funny)
America, FUCK YEAH!!!
Banana? (Score:2, Informative)
I won't be impressed.... (Score:4, Funny)
So how about those Electric Universe people? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems the electrical universe people haven't had time to update their website [thunderbolts.info] about their prediction about the results [slashdot.org]. IIRC, they were saying that the results would be much less spectacular than predicted, and yet a few hours ago I heard some of the NASA people expressing surprise because the impact released a lot more material than most of them expected. The electric universe proponents also seemed to think that the impactor electrical systems would fail before it reached the comet (because of "megalightning" and all that), while they seem to have have lasted right up until the impact.
So....will they do the right thing and modify their theory to fit the observations, or will we be treated to a lot of hand-wringing about how the theory actually predicted this result (but us non-electrodynamical people just don't understand the theory and its implications)?
And will /. post a follow-up article about the electric universe proponents' reaction to the results, or is that not news for nerds?
What a bunch of loons. (Score:4, Funny)
What's the name of that condition? They can accurately calculate the energy released when they open a bottle of soda, but when they can't find a belonging of theirs, the notion that a space alien came by and collected it for testing seems just as plausible to them as the possibility that they just misplaced it. No grasp on reality.
Re:So how about those Electric Universe people? (Score:3, Interesting)
Regarding one of the predictions from the linked page: " The impact/electrical discharge will be into rock, not loosely consolidated ice and dust. The impact crater will be smaller t
And, of course, In Russia the comet hits _you_ (Score:5, Informative)
Apparent Shape of Flying Vegetation (Score:3, Funny)
That goes without saying. Recall the law on the shape of flying food.
The shape of Comet Tempel 1 (Score:3, Interesting)
We Come in Peace - Shoot To Kill (Score:3, Insightful)
Next Time (Score:4, Insightful)
Next time would be better if:
Bah that's old news (Score:3, Funny)
You remember - it was called "Deep doodoo" or something.
Boy did we have fun in Hawaii. (Score:3, Informative)
I've read that the Waikiki Beach event attracted 10,000 people. I'm not sure how many usually show up for the free "Sunset on the Beach" movies, though, so I don't know what the delta was there. I don't have numbers for Bishop either.
Hilo [hawaiitribune-herald.com] and Maui [mauinews.com] each had hundreds of attendees, were standing (or sitting on the floor) room only, had to open extra rooms for NASA TV streams, and still had people standing outside looking in the doors. The Keck headquarters in Waimea got about twice as many people as could fit inside.
Of course, anybody with enough bandwidth can watch NASA TV, but in our main program space (far too small, alas!) we also had a few other attractions:
Re:4.5Kt, surely? (Score:5, Informative)
19/4.184 ~ 4.5 tonnes TNT
TNT has a lot of energy
Re:4.5Kt, surely? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, it's just that the news last night said "about 5 kilotonnes", so does that mean that the 4GJ figure is wrong or was the news...Actually why don't we just calculate it:
.5*372Kg*(37000Km/hr=10000m/s)^2 -> 18.6GJ.
So, the news was wrong. Fair enough.
TWW
And now in terms you're familiar with (Score:5, Funny)
1 Snickers contains 280 Kcal = 1172080 J = 0.00117208 GJ
19 / 0.00117208 ~ 16210.5 Snickers
So the amount of energy released is the equivalent of about 16.2 Megasnickers.
Re:And now in terms you're familiar with (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And now in terms you're familiar with (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok that's about the best laugh I've had on Slashdot in a *long* time. =)
Re:And now in terms you're familiar with (Score:3, Funny)
Mmmm. Megasnickers.....
Re:And now in terms you're familiar with (Score:4, Informative)
Hmmm
Megasnickers-level detonations are still a few years away with current technology.
Re:4.5Kt, surely? (Score:2)
Thad
Re:4.5Kt, surely? (Score:2)
Re:4.5Kt, surely? (Score:2)
But the penetration power is still quite good, because all momentum is initially directed into the ground, very much like it is with a shaped charge.
btw: The pictures are just breathtaking... on them it really looks like 4.5kt (which is a testemony of the amazing light collection power of current telescopes and quantum efficiency of CCD arrays)
Re:4.5Kt, surely? (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the apparent 'explosion' visible in the images is due to sunlight illuminating the plume of dust produced by the impact. Comet nuclei are pretty dark, so I suppose the exposure times were probably cranked right up to see anything of the nucleus itself.
This is all guesswork, of course, but I remember a similar explanation of the 'explosions' visible when the Shoemaker Levy 9 comet fragments hit Jupiter [nasa.gov]. Mankind has kind of built our own tiny version of that!
Of course, the above could all be utterly incorrect...
19 Gigajoules of energy (Score:2)
Re:19 Gigajoules of energy (Score:2)
Just for you: 19,730.
Re:19 Gigajoules of energy (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a handy tool for doing that kind of calculations, called 'units'.
A marsbar (65g) has about 294 kilocalories (source: http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk/calories/calo rie_counter/chocolate_sweets.htm [weightloss...rces.co.uk])
So, we edit /usr/share/misc/units.dat (may wary depending on distro) to add the line:
marsbar 294 kilocalorieWe then launch units:
%units2085 units, 71 prefixes, 32 nonlinear units
You have: 19 gigajoules
You want: marsbars
* 15435.619
/ 6.4785221e-05
You have:
So apparently, 19 gigajoules of energy equals ~15436 mars bars.
Re:19 Gigajoules of energy (Score:2)
That's 1.25MJ per bar
Thus about 15000 bars
Re:Insides on the outside (Score:2)
Re:Insides on the outside (Score:3, Informative)
It's not the explosion that detects the presence of organic compounds but the observations you can make about the generated blast debris. Either mid or infra-red spectroscopy or radio emissions reveal what compounds are present by their signatures.
Think CSI in space :-)
Not CSI (Score:2)
Re: Insides on the outside (Score:4, Interesting)
> If the internal makeup of this comet does represent the compounds present at the start of the solar system, there could be some serious head scratching and changing of theories going on if amino acids are found, let alone any more complex organic compounds like RNA/DNA, however unlikely.
We already know that amino acids are present in deep space. Slightly more complex molecules too, IIRC.
Of course, that just means they're relatively easy to form by non-biological processes, so it doesn't necessarily follow that they originated on earth by falling from space.
Re:Insides on the outside (Score:2)
Yep, this is the best sort of science. Serious and far-reaching but with a plot that Hollywood would pinch and incredibly good fun too!
Can you imagine being the person responsible for the weight smashing into the comet, it would wipe the floor with DOOM 3, (although maybe the soundtrack would not be quite so "atmospheric")!
Re:Let's hope that... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wasn't there a plaque on that thing? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:And Nasa's already getting sued for it. (Score:2)
Or "free" publicity...or at least at the expense of the judicial system. The suit is ludicrous - the amount of energy involved is trivial compared to the energy required to change the orbit of this thing in any measurable way. There's no way she can win. But today everyone in the world will hear her name.
Re:a question of priorities in the united states. (Score:3, Insightful)
The cost of this mission to you does not represent tax dollars to you. In fact, it's probably tax "cents". Tell me how a few million dollars will end starvation, genocide or ecological collapse? It would just be wasted there, too. At least this way we "waste" it in new and unusual ways and gain knowledge, but I know this is not important to you.
Correct. (Score:3, Interesting)
It does. [bbc.co.uk]
standard operating procedure (Score:3, Insightful)
The first remark is that they haven't transfered
Re:JPL Media types, please read this (Score:5, Informative)
Second, automated image enhancement is pointless. As an amateur photographer, I know that each picture needs to be optimized manually, and using automatic settings often works, but not always. You'll get good pictures, but not 12 hours after impact. Plus I'm sure much of what they received wasn't good anyway and had to be thrown out.
Third, you obviously don't know the complexity of these projects. Most of the public doesn't really care about the low resolution pictures - they'll see the high res pictures when they're broadcast by the media. Which means that there's no point for NASA to deal with the 0.1% of the public who think they deserve to get access to those pictures.
Fourth, I'm really rather insulted by your pompous attitude regarding the people at NASA. No, I don't work at NASA. Nor can I call myself a scientist yet. But I'm an undergraduate physics major and so far my plans are to go on to grad school. Right now I'm spending the summer at the biggest NSF-funded project (not hard to figure out which one it is) and I will tell you that the people who run the project are brilliant and have no time to deal with whiners like you. If you really wanted to work on these kinds of missions, why didn't you dedicate your life to science instead of just whining about how you don't have access to all the data. Because I doubt you can figure out much from the data, and I find your arrogance to be purely insulting.