NASA's Deep Impact 314
NivenMK1 writes "The Seattle Times has an interesting article on NASA's plan to nail the comet Tempel 1 with a chunk of copper the size of a bathtub on July 4 this year. This copper 'bullet' is intended to strike the comet at approximately 23,000 mph and hit with a force equivalent to 4.7 tons of TNT.
Scientists hope to discover what exactly the comet is made of and what changes have occurred to the outer layers with reference to the core."
RTFA (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Expensive launch mass? (Score:5, Informative)
At these speeds, the kinetic energy is so great that chemical explosives are nearly pointless.
Re:Silly question... (Score:2, Informative)
In essence it appears they don't know jack shit what it really contains.
NASA Website (Score:5, Informative)
This project has been around since 2001; probably a dup /. article somewhere... Anyway, here is the NASA website, which gives more details on the mission.
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]
Re:Silly question... (Score:5, Informative)
"The impactor is made primarily of copper (49%) as opposed to aluminum (24%) because it minimizes corruption of spectral emission lines that are used to analyze the nucleus."
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/tech/impactor.html [nasa.gov]
Re:Who Cares? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Consequences of destroying a comet (Score:3, Informative)
Nah... No offence intended but this is your run-of-the-mill, typical AC comment :)
Seriously though, you've got an interesting point. Even if no life is up there I wonder how smashing a comet affects things as a whole.
Re:This year (Score:2, Informative)
'Got a nice yacht, perchance?
One more good reason... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, I'm surprised the article submitter didn't include a link [umd.edu] to the mission website.....
Re:Who Cares? (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps you should read this article
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=286105
"Unfortunately, the blessing of abundant food is not shared by all Americans," Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack said. "A recent report from our Department of Agriculture documented an increase in hunger in America, particularly among our children."
Re:Expensive launch mass? (Score:2, Informative)
Hmmm... their experimental data is going to be skewed when they find out that today's pennies are actually 98% zinc.
Re:Expensive launch mass? (Score:3, Informative)
A quick calculation shows that the OP figure of 4.7 tons of TNT is high by about 0.12 ton TNT equiv.:
KE = 0.5 * 370kg * (23000mph)^2 = 1.956E17 ergs
1 ton TNT = 4.26E16 ergs (rough, but fairly good approx.)
1.95E17 ergs / (4.26E16 ergs) = 4.58 ton TNT equiv.
I actually work in support of this mission... (Score:2, Informative)
A lot of observing and imaging of comets and their dust comas, and analysis of the resulting images, is being carried out by Jana Pittichova [hawaii.edu], a postdoctoral fellow (and triathlete!) on Karen's research team, primarily using the University's 88-inch [hawaii.edu] telescope atop Mauna Kea [hawaii.edu].
Being [hawaii.edu] one of the operators on that telescope, I've worked with Jana on several nights - probably one-third to one-half of the Meech team's total observing this semester.
Although I understand how the observations are carried out from a purely operational and practical standpoint, I haven't seen what the actual analysis looks like... and even if I did, the odds are good that I'd need a lot of explaining, since I'm not a Ph.D. myself!