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On the Fourth of July 2005, NASA successfully executed what may be their coolest mission ever: to shoot the comet 9P/Tempel 1 with a camera-equipped cannonball. The aptly-named “Deep Impact” mission was far neater than the movie, because it was real.
Officially, the main probe was the “flyby” and the projectile was the “impactor”. Released a day early, the 370 kg (827 lbs) rocket-propelled impactor got up to 37 000 kph ( 23 000 mph) before it annihilated itself against the celestial body. The resulting explosion was observed not only by the probe’s intact half, but by space- and ground-based telescopes everywhere.
The purpose of shooting the comet was essentially a form of quick excavation; it got material from the inside of the comet to come out where spectrophotometers and other instruments could get a look at it. The physical response of the comet also yielded information.
NASA also had another admitted purpose. Although this impact came nowhere near to breaking the comet or significantly changing its orbit, such target practice could be valuable practice for heading off a big comet on a collision course with Earth.
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I don’t remember if I heard this opinion off the web or a local radio talk show, possibly both. But it amounts to:
Yea yea, of course this is what NASA sais..But comeon. You all know their real purpose….They just wanted to shoot a big missile at a rock in outer space ’cause thas just WAY TOO COOL! Sure, they’re scientists, thas why they attached the camera..Analyze the data, make a bigger hole next time.
Yeah Keaponlaffin, my first thought too; that and maybe target practice for poppin nukes , or war planes etc….LOL.
Naw, the hole is where they’re going to put the ice chest full of beer on the comet’s next flyby and we land people there…
Actually, we could do something like this to that asteroid that is supposed to pass closer to the Earth than the satellites in geosynchronous orbit in 2029. A little push now will make it miss us by a much larger margin then.
Wow, shooting a comet…. You mean that’s what they’re wasting money on? Damn, I’m in the wrong profession. I wanna shoot space crap and get paid for it for no damned reason.
My dad took me along to his abode of employment (Ball Aerospace, home of the ultimate space geeks) to see this live. There was a whole party going on, because their company had worked on the rocket thang. We saw it at about midnight, it was SO FREAKING COOL!!!!!
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This is good stuff. I’m sure it made mention in the news after a report on an assine stupid topic. WOW is what I say. This is powerful.