COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Some five years after its July 4th 2005 ‘comet shot’ was seen around the world, the Deep Impact spacecraft has begun regular imaging of a second comet target, Hartley 2. The spacecraft will continue imaging Hartley 2 during and after its closest approach on November 4, providing an extended look at the comet. However, there won’t be any fireworks this time as Deep Impact’s probe craft was destroyed in its deliberate 2005 collision with comet Tempel 1.
About the image: This image of comet Hartley 2 is from the first set of Medium Resolution Instrument (MRI) observations of the comet by the Deep Impact Spacecraft. In this image the comet is 119 million miles (191 million km) from the sun and 37 million miles (60 million km) from the spacecraft (it was closer to Earth than to the spacecraft!). The sun is straight “down” from the comet and celestial north is to the lower right. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/UMD/D. Wellnitz (UMD)
The imaging campaign, together with spectra and other data obtained from the spacecraft, will afford the mission’s science team with the best extended view of a comet during its pass through the inner-solar system in history. With the exception of one, six-day break to calibrate instruments and perform a trajectory correction maneuver, the spacecraft will continuously monitor Hartley 2’s gas and dust output for the next 79 days.
“Previous missions to comets, including Deep Impact, have shown us comets that seem to be very different. However, we hope data from the Deep Impact spacecraft’s flyby of Hartley 2, which has a much smaller nucleus than the previously visited comets, will help us to understand why they appear so different,” said A’Hearn, who won the 2008 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space Science Award for his leadership of the spacecraft’s Deep Impact mission to comet Tempel 1.
The University of Maryland is the Principal Investigator institution for the mission. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the EPOXI mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Drake Deming of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, is the science lead for the mission’s extrasolar planet observations. The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.
*Source: University of Maryland
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