NASA's Stunning Close-Up Photos of Comet Hartley 2 62
Several readers have sent word that NASA's EPOXI spacecraft performed a close approach to comet Hartley 2 yesterday, taking pictures within roughly 700km of the nucleus. Bad Astronomer Phil Plait has a collection of some fantastic photographs, and you can check out a ton of other images on the mission website. The Planetary Society blog put together a neat animation of the flyby. NASA's mission fact sheet (PDF) explains EPOXI's background — it's the supplemental mission of the Deep Impact craft that smashed a small probe into a different comet back in 2005 — and why Hartley 2 was chosen for this flyby (they couldn't find their original target).
Pedantic Naming Clarification (Score:5, Informative)
Several readers have sent word that NASA's EPOXI spacecraft ....
EPOXI is the name of the mission (an extension of a previous mission), the spacecraft itself is actually called Deep Impact. Just trying to clear up the ambiguity.
On a related note (Score:5, Informative)
Just found this animation [esa.int] of the 1986 Giotto fly-by through the tail of Halley. (QuickTime required.) Very cool. Apparently Giotto's still out there and going strong, took a detour through another comet some years later, still does the occasional fly-by near Earth and can be reactivated if there's anything worth looking at. Not bad for a probe that they weren't expecting to survive the Halley encounter.
Re:On a related note (Score:1, Informative)
(QuickTime required.)
It's not even in QuickTime format.
http://sci.esa.int/science-e-media/video/12/140.mpg