Million Dollar Spacecraft Runover by Comet

[deguspice]

Last night at 1:52am EDT I watched live via the Internet, NASA's Deep Impact space probe collide with comet Tempel 1.  Or as they put it, the probe was run over by the comet. They carefully placed the probe in the path of the comet and let the comet fly into the probe at 23,000mph.

I could have gone to bed earlier and then read about the results in the morning, instead I stayed up and watched it happen live.  It's much more interesting to do it that way, you get to vicariously share the worry and then the joy when the mission is a success as you watch the NASA people at work.

The pictures of the probe's impact turned out better than they were expecting (unfortunately, it occured too late in the evening to make onto the front page of most newspapers).

Best line I heard from one of their experts: Tempel 1 is shaped like a pickle, mind you it's a nine-mile pickle.

Comments

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Have they released any data yet?

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

The Deep Impact website has "first-person" video taken from the Impactor probe as it approached the comet and they have a video from the Flyby space craft showing the cloud of dust flying into space after the impact (in the background you can see the shadow of the plume of dust).  But they haven't released any analysis of the results.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/main/index.html

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

The pictures are very cool... but I'll be really curious to hear what they find out.