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Space Science

Cometary Fireworks Go Off Without Hitch 374

Posted by Zonk from the waaay-better-than-the-movie dept.
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."
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Cometary Fireworks Go Off Without Hitch More

Cometary Fireworks Go Off Without Hitch

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  • Where are the Stars in the pictures? (Score:4, Funny)

    by TheKidWho ( 705796 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:05AM (#12978689)
    No stars in the backgrounds? this most obviously be a hoax created by our American Overlords just like the moon landings! Those tricky bastards won't trick ME again!

  • And the real question is ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ihlosi ( 895663 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:06AM (#12978690)
    ... what did the explosion sound like.

    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.

  • A mini-animation (Score:4, Informative)

    by RobotWisdom ( 25776 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:07AM (#12978697) Homepage
    Just because no one else has, yet: inept animated gif [robotwisdom.com]

    • Re:A mini-animation (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ford Prefect ( 8777 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:17AM (#12978743) Homepage
      Also a pretty cool, official NASA Quicktime movie from the impactor's camera [nasa.gov] - kind of wobbly and jerky, but nifty nevertheless.

      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)

        by Dunbal ( 464142 )
        If the probe is travelling at 37,000 kph that's what, about 10.3 km/sec. Whoa, that comet is absolutely huge and the camera has an incredible number of frames/second. I guess if you know the radius of the comet and the speed of the probe you could calculate time it took for the whole series and thus the FPS on the camera...since I don't think the "movie" is in "realtime" (there are far too many "close up" shots compared to "far away" shots, as if the probe had slowed down or the camera was speeded up). It a

        • Re:A mini-animation (Score:3, Insightful)

          by joeljkp ( 254783 )
          It says in the caption that the movie is just a slideshow of stills. I'm guessing they included more close-up ones because it would be more interesting (and shorter) that way.

        • Re:A mini-animation (Score:3, Insightful)

          by radtea ( 464814 )
          I leave it as an excercise for the geek physicist reader - I'm a biologist (too much math for me ugh!).

          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
    • The Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla put together a fairly nice animated GIF of the impact and posted it to the Society's official blog [planetary.org]:

      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)

    by Mahou ( 873114 ) <made_up_address_.hotmail@com> on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:12AM (#12978719) Journal
    NASA headshots Tempel 1 >(x.x)-

  • No satellites involved (Score:2, Informative)

    by MoobY ( 207480 )
    No one slammed a "satellite" into a comet, but rather a space ship released an impactor that crashed into the comet.

  • Seems a Lot Smoother Than I Would Have Thought (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DanielMarkham ( 765899 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:14AM (#12978732) Homepage
    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. I wonder if this will change the theory of how comets are constructed?

    Ugliest Dog I Ever Saw [whattofix.com]


    • > 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)

    by Robotron23 ( 832528 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:15AM (#12978737)
    This is quite likely the finest result Nasa has had for a long time. To quote a professor who was quite surprised by the event :

    "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)

      by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:18AM (#12978748)


      > This is quite likely the finest result Nasa has had for a long time.

      Ignoring a couple of rovers on Mars...

    • Re:Result (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "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."

      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.
    • 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.

      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

    • This is quite likely the finest result Nasa has had for a long time.

      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!
    • Creation of the solar system, surely? I don't see how this is going to reveal anything about the universe as a whole...
    • All from the impact of a probe just the size of a washing machine.

      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)

      by Kenshin ( 43036 )
      "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."

      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)

    by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:15AM (#12978738) Homepage Journal

    I wonder if it will be friends with me?

    • I thought you earthlings would have learnt from your own history of Pearl Harbour not to wake sleeping giants.

      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.

  • What I love about space is the scale. On earth, that's a whole lots of explosives. But in space . . . it's not really all that grand. YAY for space!

  • OR... (Score:4, Funny)

    by dawnread ( 851254 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:19AM (#12978750)
    "Impact was estimated to have released 19 Gigajoules of energy, or the equivalent of 4.5 tons of TNT."

    Or the equivalent of a Supersized meal from McDonalds...

  • impact seen from Lowell Observatory (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DiniZuli ( 621956 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:19AM (#12978754) Homepage
    This [ewellobservatory.com] is a gif animation of the impact as observed from the Lowell Observatory.

  • There was supposed to be a Kaboom! (Score:4, Funny)

    by SirFozzie ( 442268 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:23AM (#12978772)
    Where was the loud, comet shattering kaboom? I'll tell you what, Mars will not be happy when they hear this, or that they didn't hear this.

    Oh Well. Guess next time I will have to use an Illudium-Q-36 Space Modulator.

    (toddles off)

  • What's all the fuss about. (Score:5, Funny)

    by mike1086 ( 188761 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:27AM (#12978792)
    Did someone think this wouldn't work?

    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)

    by ScorpFromHell ( 837952 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:31AM (#12978809) Homepage
    A Russian astrologist who says NASA has altered her horoscope by crashing a spacecraft into a comet is suing the U.S. space agency for damages of $300 million.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200507/s14066 93.htm [abc.net.au]
    http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/07/04/deep. impact.sues.reut/ [cnn.com]

  • Ob Monty Python quote (Score:3, Funny)

    by zarkzervo ( 634677 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:33AM (#12978820) Homepage Journal
    "came to resemble more of a banana shape

    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)

    by PhotoGuy ( 189467 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:37AM (#12978832) Homepage
    "Washing machine sized", they say. I'm lost, help me out here. That must be a tecchie unit of measurement that is only used internally by NASA or something. Can someone put that in terms of "Volkswagens" or "Libraries of Congress" for me?

    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.

  • 9/11 for comet people (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:47AM (#12978873)
    Is this the day the comet people, after an uprovoked robotic suicide bombing, begin their war on the people of earth? After all, the freedom of the Oort cloud is at stake.

  • Experiment result (Score:5, Funny)

    by BigYawn ( 842342 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:48AM (#12978880)
    Nasa just released the results of their collision experiment:

    Tempel: 1
    Impactor: 0

  • Partly Offtopic (Score:5, Funny)

    by hyfe ( 641811 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:54AM (#12978900)
    http://us.cnn.com/ [cnn.com] US headline: 'Smashing success': Probe crashes on comet

    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.

  • "And that, my lord, is how we know the earth to be banana-shaped."

    It had to be said...

  • Go Team... (Score:2, Funny)

    by RealBeanDip ( 26604 )
    With today being July 4'th, and with this great accomplishment, it's time for a rousing chorus of:

    America, FUCK YEAH!!!

  • Banana? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Hynee ( 774168 )
    I think you'll find that's a picture [nasa.gov] of the comet's nucleus in the crescent type phase... here's [nasa.gov] a better view of it.

  • I won't be impressed.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by hazman ( 642790 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @09:22AM (#12979039)
    until we send manned probes crashing into comets.

  • So how about those Electric Universe people? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NewbieProgrammerMan ( 558327 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:03AM (#12979223)

    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)

      by i41Overlord ( 829913 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @12:02PM (#12979940)
      I took a look at that website and I can see that they're a bunch of loons. It surprises me when I read websites made by someone who obviously has a good grasp on math and science, but apparently little to no grasp on reality. I find it strange that people can turn out that way.

      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.

  • And, of course, In Russia the comet hits _you_ (Score:5, Informative)

    by Snowhare ( 263311 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @11:26AM (#12979731)
    No, really: Tunguska [wikipedia.org], June 30th 1908. :)

  • Apparent Shape of Flying Vegetation (Score:3, Funny)

    by PingPongBoy ( 303994 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @11:53AM (#12979880)
    Initially thought to be shaped like a pickle, it came to resemble more of a banana shape

    That goes without saying. Recall the law on the shape of flying food.

    Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

  • The shape of Comet Tempel 1 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ctwxman ( 589366 ) <me@@@geofffox...com> on Monday July 04, 2005 @11:59AM (#12979922) Homepage
    From the original post: "Initially thought to be shaped like a pickle, it came to resemble more of a banana shape as comet Tempel I drew closer." For four seasons I hosted Inside Space, a science fact program on the SciFi Channel (it's like being on the Celibacy Show on Playboy). We traveled everywhere visiting the brightest minds in space (pun intended) and nearly every human on the Earth who has "rocket scientist" on his/her business card. There was one recurring theme. Everything in space that's not a planet or star is potato shaped - period, case closed. Next.

  • We Come in Peace - Shoot To Kill (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @12:04PM (#12979949) Homepage Journal
    It's like stabbing a screwdriver into a Swiss watch, to learn how it keeps time.

  • Next Time (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jmichaelg ( 148257 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @12:17PM (#12980011) Journal
    It was a very impressive achievement. We need to do a lot more of these missions so we have an adequate sample of what comets look like because, scoff if you will, eventually earth will be endangered by one. If we have a sample of several comets we can make reasonable plans as to how to deflect them. Right now we have a sample of one.

    Next time would be better if:

    • There's enough fuel on the mother ship to drop the impactor and then get out of harm's way to turn around to match speeds with the comet. The mother ship can linger over the crater for years watching the newly formed crater evolve.
    • The mother could land another drop ship in the newly excavated crater to give us a closeup of the comet's interior.
    • Deploy several microprobes that have little seismometers on them. As the comet outgasses, the seimic waves will give us information as to how the comet's interior is structured. Each seismometer could be powered with a small atomic battery [technologyreview.com] which would enable it to operate for years and provide ample power to broadcast the seismometer's readings to the mother ship.
    • Make sure the equipment functions properly before it's launched. Blurry hi res photos because someone forgot to calibrate the equipment or parachutes that fail to open over Utah because they're installed backwards aren't ok.

  • Bah that's old news (Score:3, Funny)

    by Scooter ( 8281 ) <owen@ann[ ]ova.force9.net ['icn' in gap]> on Monday July 04, 2005 @07:06PM (#12981842)
    We brits hit Mars a few months back already!

    You remember - it was called "Deep doodoo" or something. :P

  • Boy did we have fun in Hawaii. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Shag ( 3737 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @11:23PM (#12982782) Journal
    My wife and daughter went to the outreach event at U of Hawaii - Hilo campus. I was handling all the video and communications at a parallel event at Maui Community College. There were also events at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, and on Waikiki Beach.

    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:

    • Lots of free posters, stickers, etc.
    • Professional astronomers Shadia Habbal, J.D. Armstrong and Jonathan Williams fielding questions and, in Jon's case, giving a presentation.
    • Live video links (via iChat AV) with a group of students from Hawaii and Iceland who were one floor above us, remotely operating the Faulkes telescope on Haleakala as part of a workshop with educators from the US, Iceland and the UK.
    • Display of up-to-the-minute images off Faulkes. (Yes, the comet got a whole lot brighter!)
    • Live video links with, and a presentation from, Mike Martin of Boeing (which provided the rocket), who was on the summit of Haleakala.
    • Live video chat with Mike Maberry, Assistant Director for Maui at the U. of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, also on the summit of Haleakala.
    • Live video chat with Bill Giebink of the IfA, who was on the summit of Haleakala to keep an eye on Faulkes. (And who, I might note, showed up on video with his granddaughter sitting on his shoulders.)
    • Live video chat with Glenn at the Smithsonian-Harvard-Taiwan submillimeter array on Mauna Kea
    • Live video chat with Hiroko at the Caltech submillimeter observatory on Mauna Kea
    • A couple brief bits of live streaming video from Japan's Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea.
    The Maui News said something about "live television feeds" - nope, all the people we were talking to were over iChat AV. :)

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