Deep Impact Probe to Look for Earth-sized Planets 59
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "NASA has given University of Maryland scientists the green light to fly the Deep Impact probe to Comet Hartley 2. The spacecraft will pass Earth on New Year's Eve at the beginning of a more than two-and-a-half-year journey to Hartley 2. During the first six months of the journey to Hartley 2, they will use the larger of the two telescopes on Deep Impact to search for Earth-sized planets around five stars selected as likely candidates for such planets. Upon arriving at the comet, Deep Impact will conduct an extended flyby of Hartley 2 using all three of the spacecraft's instruments — two telescopes with digital color cameras and an infrared spectrometer."
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Two is better than one (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm frustrated that the pace of space exploration is so slow. There is so much we don't know about our own neighborhood. By now we should have an orbiter around every planet and major moon in this system, and the cost of doing so would be tiny in comparison to the data gathered.
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US government policy is as well written as the mini-series V. Lets hope it succeeds in bankrupting the creators this time.
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Re:Two is better than one (Score:4, Insightful)
What looks better on the tube --- enemies getting their asses kicked and old people looking neglected or the 1 minute orgasmic thrill of a rocket booster launch. Like a firework, a quick flame and WHOOSH, gone from view. Who cares about data collection and knowledge increases --- much too cerebral for Joe Blow voter. Whereas blown up "enemy installations" and insurgent body counts make for much better evening news updates. Throw in a few vacant-eyed old people scrapping by on SS only and you have yourself NEWS AT 11 everyday.
So sad, but almost inevitable, given attention spans of the masses, it's "What They Want" after all
Invent an enemy. (Score:2)
Ok. So here's the plan. We invent an enemy. We stage an attack on a few of our bases, and blame it on "Them". Then we set up some mock cities in Utah, or Alaska, or somewhere, and blow these "enemy" military installations to bits (on camera, of course). Make it look like we're liberat
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I wasn't aware that "enemies getting their asses kicked" was getting a lot of tube coverage these days. What tube are you looking at?
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- Satellites: Thanks for DirectTV Sputnik.
- Meteorology: Thanks for the nightly satellite picture every evening news.
- Agraculture: How much more food does the world produce because of surveys of our fields from space?
- Science Fiction: It's enriched the lives of so many, but how much did real space exploration inspire it's creation?
- Politics: The space race offered both a rallying call for nations to come together and e
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That's some pretty valuable data!
It is common for people who are not intimately involved in the processes involved in achieving something to fail to appreciate the time/work/energy that goes into it. Especially in this day an age when when so much is done for us (by computers or other pe
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I don't understand this, though. Once you've made a successful orbiter, all you have to do is copy that one. Then all you have to worry about is getting the trajectory right to enter the orbit you want. Oh, and don't forget to convert to metric...
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This is an impossible goal. When you're reusing your old stuff, you aren't innovating to create new stuff, and when you are innovating to create new stuff, you aren't reusing the old. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
On an unrelated note... (Score:1)
Just wondering...
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Well, I'm thinking along the lines of the airline industry. Planes stay in production for decades. They don't have to build a new one for each trip. If space exploration were more like that, we'd see more exploration. We're just far too early into it to see thiat kind of progress.
-mat
Re:Two is better than one (Score:5, Informative)
NASA were just about the only guys to get a budget increase (3%), and even what they got will require sacrificing programs.
Landscape is even worse for other fields of science:
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/1218/1 [sciencemag.org]
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Sure I Would have liked to see the budget increased, but keeping pace with what they currently have should not be considered bad either
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It just goes to show... (Score:1)
...when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
how big (Score:3, Insightful)
With a name like Deep Impact wouldn't make sense for it to look for any near earth asteroids or comets that might be coming our way.
Not deep. (Score:2)
This is the probe that previously released an impactor to, uh, impact deep into the nucleus of another comet.
Uh... no. A chunk of the metal the size of a dishwasher doesn't get far into a nucleus the size of a small city. And it didn't even crack it open enough to find any volatile compounds inside (if there were any). But it did kick up some dust so we (astronomy types) could all take pictures and spectra, yay.
:)
One of these days, I'm going to "build" the little fold-up paper model of it that's at home...
Re:how big (Score:5, Informative)
The drawback of using Hubble to do this is that astronomers the world over are competing for time on it, so it's booked solid. The University of British Columbia has a satellite of its own [astro.ubc.ca], with a 150mm telescope (much smaller than Hubble's 2m) in orbit specifically to look for transiting extrasolar planets. They basically observe one star for months at a time, hoping to catch the dip in the star's brightness that would mean a planet is transiting. The telescope on this probe is probably about the same size, and since it's not going to be doing anything for the next year or so, why not point it at some candidate stars for that period? You might just get lucky. The fact that there's no atmospheric interference is really what makes the difference between discovering a jupiter-sized planet and an earth-sized planet with this method.
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Probe trajectory? (Score:3, Interesting)
What I couldn't decipher is how long will the probe be in close proximity to the comet? On opposing vectors? Or will the slingshot put it alongside the same trajectory as the comet coming up from behind? If the latter, now that's a pretty cool set of calculations, and should make for a nice long study of the comet.
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What I couldn't decipher is how long will the probe be in close proximity to the comet? On opposing vectors? Or will the slingshot put it alongside the same trajectory as the comet coming up from behind? If the latter, now that's a pretty cool set of calculations, and should make for a nice long study of the comet.
A little googling and some luck turned up this EPOXI Trajectory [nasa.gov] on NASA's web site. As far as I can tell, the craft will be traveling at right angles to the comet. Probe's final orbit in the image heads from top to bottom; the comet comes in from the right, loops around clockwise, and heads back out to the right.
Hope that helps!
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The probe carried a 370 kg (815 lb) impactor. It "dropped" the impactor on comet 9P/Tempel back in 2005. The still-operating part of the probe carries the cameras that took pictures of the impact.
Deep Impact now has an "extended mission", which is NASA-speak for "whatever useful stuff we can do with this probe we've already launched".
Where is the FIRST Comet? (Score:1)
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Details on the instruments (Score:4, Informative)
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Kepler probe (2009) will watch 100K stars (Score:2)