Deep Impact, Tempel-1 and bad snooker puns...

[Rick]

Tempel-1: iceberg or galactic rubber ball?

April Fool special NASA's Deep Impact probe launched successfully on 12 January, on a mission to more accurately understand the properties of comets.

Its target is Tempel-1 - chosen because although it might be rock and ice like most other comets, scientists have reason to suspect that much of its structure is highly elastic frozen cross-linked hydrocarbons (very much like Kevlar or stiff rubber).

Ice can be a notoriously tough material, being resistant to both heat and shock, but scientists still don't know if the average comet has enough ice to be as tough as an iceberg or if it is as weak as the famous Shumacher-Levy comet which broke up under the influence of Jupiter's gravity. If, however, Tempel-1 is indeed comprised of rubber-like hydrocarbons, as mission planners suspect, then the results of the Deep Impact strike will be very interesting.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/01/deep_impact_update/

[Ian]

fooled you

Deep impact hit Tempel 1 as planned on the 4th July.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4647673.stm

[Rick]

Another report including some images from (one of) the Faulkes...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/04/comet_tempel_hit/

[Rick]

NASA has cancelled a scheduled liaison between its Deep Impact spacecraft and Comet 85P/Boethin because the latter has disappeared without trace, New Scientist reports.

Deep Impact completed its principal mission back in 2005, when it fired a 360kg probe into Comet Tempel-1 in an attempt to deduce the body's composition.

It then set off for a late 2008 hook-up with Boethin, a body which has been spied only twice, "first when it was discovered during a close approach to the Sun in 1975, and again during a second close passage in 1986".

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/17/deep_impact/

[Mike]

Reports that Paul Whitmarsh programmed the probes navigation systems are unconfirmed.

[Mike]

NASA has released images of the Moon taken from its Deep Impact spacecraft - some 31 million miles from Earth.

A camera on the probe was turned back towards Earth and in a time lapse sequence, captured the moon passing in front on 29 May.

The video shows a graphic, in the corner, highlighting the position of the earth at the time of the image.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7515249.stm

[mickw]

NASA's latest lunar probe looks to grab the spotlight next month when it takes a two-part sledgehammer to the moon, but it's hardly the first space mission to set a planned collision course for destruction.

The history of space exploration includes many spacecraft that intentionally impacted on the moon or other solar system bodies. Some simply went out in a blaze of glory upon completion of their primary mission. For others such as Deep Impact in 2005 and NASA's current LCROSS mission, slamming into a celestial body represented the highlight of their existence.

Never mind the accidental graveyards for generations of robotic explorers that tried for the soft landings. Here SPACE.com focuses on the willful participants in an ongoing space demolition derby – all in the name of science, of course.

More:   http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090915-st-doomed-missions.html

[Rick]

Team Attempts to Restore Communications

Ground controllers have been unable to communicate with NASA's long-lived Deep Impact spacecraft. Last communication with the spacecraft was on Aug. 8, 2013. Deep Impact mission controllers will continue to uplink commands in an attempt to reestablish communications with the spacecraft.

Mission controllers postulate that there was an anomaly generated by the spacecraft's software which left the vehicle's computers in a condition where they are continuously rebooting themselves. If this is the case, the computers would not continue to command the vehicle's thrusters to fire and hold attitude. Lack of attitude hold makes attempts to reestablish communications more difficult because the orientation of the spacecraft's antennas is unknown. It also brings into question the vehicle's electrical power status, as the spacecraft derives its power from a solar array that is fixed, with its cells pointing in one direction.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-275

[Rick]

NASA's Deep Space Comet Hunter Mission Comes to an End

After almost 9 years in space that included an unprecedented July 4th impact and subsequent flyby of a comet, an additional comet flyby, and the return of approximately 500,000 images of celestial objects, NASA's Deep Impact mission has ended.

The project team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has reluctantly pronounced the mission at an end after being unable to communicate with the spacecraft for over a month. The last communication with the probe was Aug. 8. Deep Impact was history's most traveled comet research mission, going about 4.7 billion miles (7.58 billion kilometers).

"Deep Impact has been a fantastic, long-lasting spacecraft that has produced far more data than we had planned," said Mike A'Hearn, the Deep Impact principal investigator at the University of Maryland in College Park. "It has revolutionized our understanding of comets and their activity."

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-287