Discovery Rolls Out to the Pad

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I know it feels like it was just yesterday that Endeavour returned from its mission to the International Space Station. With the new compressed space shuttle schedule, get used to it – NASA’s got a lot of missions to schedule if they’re going to hit their 2010 completion date of the International Space Station. Next up, Discovery. The shuttle was moved out to the launch pad on Sunday, and now awaits its October 23rd launch.

The shuttle made the 5.5 km (3.4 mile) journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to its launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. It started out at 6:47 am EDT, and was firmly down at the launch pad at 1:15 pm. The huge crawler transporter only moves about 1.6 kph (1 mph), so it’s really slow going.

With the shuttle on the pad, everyone still has a series of activities to complete before the beginning of mission STS-120. The crew will arrive on October 7th, and perform a dress rehearsal on October 10th.

If all goes well, Discovery will blast off on October 23rd, once again bound for the International Space Station. The shuttle will be carrying the US-built Harmony module. This six-hatched cylinder will serve as a pressurized gateway to attach future science laboratories to the station.

The STS-120 crew is led by Pam Melroy, only the second woman ever to command a space shuttle mission.

Original Source: NASA News Release

NGC 3603, as Seen by Hubble

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It’s time for another amazing image from Hubble. You’re looking at nebula NGC 3603, one of the most spectacular star forming regions in the Milky Way. It’s located about 20,000 light-years away from the Earth, in the Carina spiral arm. Apart from offering up pretty pictures, this region is important for science too. Birth and death, gas and dust, NGC 3603 has it all.

This Hubble image shows many different things happening, all at the same time. Most of the stars in the image were all born in the nebula, and differ in size, mass, temperature and colour. There are some absolute monsters in there, dozens of times the mass of our own Sun. These huge stars live fast and die young, burning through their hydrogen fuel quickly, and blowing out fearsome ultraviolet radiation. The combined radiation of all the stars has carved out an enormous cavity of gas and dust in the centre of the nebula – the clear region in the middle.

According to astronomers, the most massive stars are concentrated into the centre of the cluster. In fact, three of them seem to have more mass than is theoretically possible. Instead of single stars; however, they might be binary pairs, so close that even Hubble can’t distinguish them. The largest star was measured with a mass of 115 times the mass of our Sun. So, either the observations or the theories are wrong; stay tuned to see how this one plays out.

Around the swirling nebula are some darker regions called Bok globules. These are dark clouds of gas and dust with the mass of about 10-50 times our Sun. They’re under the process of collapsing, and will eventually form stars, but for now they’re some of the coldest objects in the Universe. You need cold gas before you can get hot stars.

The entire nebula seems contain about 400,000 times the mass of the Sun. That’s enough material for plenty of stars.

Original Source: ESA Hubble News Release

Lunar Probe’s High Definition View of the Earth

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There’s nothing as nice as a pretty view of our home planet. It really puts things in perspective. I’m on that planet, and so are you. It’s a high definition image of the Earth, of course, captured on September 29th by the Japanese spacecraft Kaguya (aka Selene) from a distance of 110,000 km. It’s currently in Earth-orbit, but on October 3rd, it’ll begin transferring its orbit to the Moon.

As to the actual mission, here’s an article we posted a couple of weeks ago, when the spacecraft was launched. We’ll report back with further updates, for now, just enjoy the pretty picture.

Original Source: JAXA News Release

Astrosphere for October 2, 2007

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Today’s astrophoto was captured by Mike Salway. It’s the Milky Way. Wow.

Here’s a new blog that I’m watching: Black Holes and Astro Stuff. In other words, space bloggers are contacting me, and letting me know they exist. And you should do the same. Email me at [email protected]. That way I can help you out and raise awareness of your hard work.

Personal Spaceflight has an interesting story about the trials and tribulations Anousheh Ansari went through to become a space tourist.

Pamela looks at a group of galaxies called Seyfert’s Sextet. It looks like an important stage in galaxy evolution.

CNet has this interview with X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis.

My blogging comrades over at Wired News have wrapped up a contest for people to choose a new tagline for NASA. I won’t spoil it for you, check out the top entries.

Phil finds a garden shaped like a galaxy.

The 2007 Spaceward Games are just two weeks away.

And finally, a community of space enthusiasts are building a fictional galaxy, star by star, planet by planet. It’s called the Galaxiki, and it’s one of those wiki things, where the public is able to freely edit it.

True or False (Color): The Art of Extraterrestrial Photography

Carina Nebula. Image credit: Hubble Space Telescope/NASA.

When you look at the amazing pictures captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, or the Mars Exploration Rovers, do you ever wonder: is that what you’d really see with your own eyes? The answer, sadly, is probably not. In some cases, such as with the Mars rovers, scientists try and calibrate the rovers to see in “true color,” but mostly, colors are chosen to yield the most science. Here’s how scientists calibrate their amazing instruments, and the difference between true and false colors.

So, to start off, let’s put this in the form of a true or false question: T or F: When we see the gorgeous, iconic images from Hubble or the stunning panoramas from the Mars rovers, do those pictures represent what human eyes would see if they observed those vistas first hand?

Answer: For the Hubble, mostly false. For the rovers, mostly true, as the rovers provide a combination of so-called “true” and “false” color images. But, it turns out, the term “true color” is a bit controversial, and many involved in the field of extraterrestrial imaging are not very fond of it.

“We actually try to avoid the term ‘true color’ because nobody really knows precisely what the ‘truth’ is on Mars,” said Jim Bell, the lead scientist for the Pancam color imaging system on the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER). In fact, Bell pointed out, on Mars, as well as Earth, color changes all the time: whether it’s cloudy or clear, the sun is high or low, or if there are variations in how much dust is in the atmosphere. “Colors change from moment to moment. It’s a dynamic thing. We try not to draw the line that hard by saying ‘this is the truth!'”

Bell likes to use the term “approximate true color” because the MER panoramic camera images are estimates of what humans would see if they were on Mars. Other colleagues, Bell said, use “natural color.”

Zolt Levay of the Space Telescope Science Institute produces images from the Hubble Space Telescope. For the prepared Hubble images, Levay prefers the term “representative color.”

“The colors in Hubble images are neither ‘true’ colors nor ‘false’ colors, but usually are representative of the physical processes underlying the subjects of the images,” he said. “They are a way to represent in a single image as much information as possible that’s available in the data.”

True color would be an attempt to reproduce visually accurate color. False color, on the other hand, is an arbitrary selection of colors to represent some characteristic in the image, such as chemical composition, velocity, or distance. Additionally, by definition, any infrared or ultraviolet image would need to be represented with “false color” since those wavelengths are invisible to humans.

The cameras on Hubble and MER do not take color pictures, however. Color images from both spacecraft are assembled from separate black & white images taken through color filters. For one image, the spacecraft have to take three pictures, usually through a red, a green, and a blue filter and then each of those photos gets downlinked to Earth. They are then combined with software into a color image. This happens automatically inside off-the-shelf color cameras that we use here on Earth. But the MER Pancams have 8 different color filters while Hubble has almost 40, ranging from ultraviolet (“bluer” than our eyes can see,) through the visible spectrum, to infrared (“redder” than what is visible to humans.) This gives the imaging teams infinitely more flexibility and sometimes, artistic license. Depending on which filters are used, the color can be closer or farther from “reality.”

Stone mountain rock outcrop in true and false colour. Image credit: NASA/JPL
Stone mountain rock outcrop in true and false colour. Image credit: NASA/JPL

The same rock imaged in true and false color by Opportunity.

In the case of the Hubble, Levay explained, the images are further adjusted to boost contrast and tweak colors and brightness to emphasize certain features of the image or to make a more pleasing picture.

But when the MER Pancam team wants to produce an image that shows what a human standing on Mars would see, how do they get the right colors? The rovers both have a tool on board known as the MarsDial which has been used as an educational project about sundials. “But its real job is a calibration target,” said Bell. “It has grayscale rings on it with color chips in the corners. We measured them very accurately and took pictures of them before launch and so we know what the colors and different shades of grey are.”

One of the first pictures taken by the rovers was of the MarsDial. “We take a picture of the MarsDial and calibrate it and process it through our software,” said Bell. “If it comes out looking like we know it should, then we have great confidence in our ability to point the camera somewhere else, take a picture, do the same process and that those colors will be right, too.”

Hubble can also produce color-calibrated images. Its “UniverseDial” would be standard stars and lamps within the cameras whose brightness and color are known very accurately. However, Hubble’s mission is not to produce images that faithfully reproduce colors. “For one thing that is somewhat meaningless in the case of most of the images,” said Levay, “since we generally couldn’t see these objects anyway because they are so faint, and our eyes react differently to colors of very faint light.” But the most important goal of Hubble is produce images that convey as much scientific information as possible.

The rover Pancams do this as well. “It turns out there is a whole variety of iron-bearing minerals that have different color response at infrared wavelengths that the camera is sensitive to,” said Bell, “so we can make very garish, kind of Andy Warhol-like false color pictures.” Bell added that these images serve double duty in that they provide scientific information, plus the public really enjoys the images.

And so, in both Hubble and MER, color is used as a tool, to either enhance an object’s detail or to visualize what otherwise could not be seen by the human eye. Without false color, our eyes would never see (and we would never know) what ionized gases make up a nebula, for example, or what iron-bearing minerals lie on the surface of Mars.

As for “true color,” there’s a large academic and scholarly community that studies color in areas such as the paint industry that sometimes gets upset when the term “true color” is used by the astronomical imaging group, Bell explained.

“They have a well-established framework for what is true color, and how they quantify color,” he said. “But we’re not really working within that framework at that level. So we try to steer away from using the term ‘true color’.”

Levay noted that no color reproduction can be 100% accurate because of differences in technology between film and digital photography, printing techniques, or even different settings on a computer screen. Additionally, there are variations in how different people perceive color.

“What we’re doing on Mars is really just an estimate,” Bell said, “it’s our best guess using our knowledge of the cameras with the calibration target. But whether it is absolutely 100% true, I think it’s going to take people going there to find that out.”

For more information see http://hubblesite.org/ or check out Jim Bell’s 2006 book “Postcards From Mars.”

Podcast: Jupiter

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Last week we talked about rubble, this week we’re going to dig into the largest planet in the Solar System: Jupiter, but will it all just be hot gas? There’s so much to talk about, we’ve decided to break this up into two shows. This week we’re going to just talk about Jupiter, and then next week, we’re going to cover its moons.

Click here to download the episode

Jupiter – Show notes and transcript

Or subscribe to: astronomycast.com/podcast.xml with your podcatching software.

What’s Up this Week: October 1 – October 7, 2007

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Monday, October 1 – In 1897, the world’s largest refractor (40″) debuted at the dedication of the University of Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory. The immense telescope was 64 feet long and weighed 6 tons. Also today in 1958, NASA was established by an act of Congress. More? In 1962, the 300 foot radio telescope of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) went live at Green Bank, West Virginia. It held its place as the world’s second largest radio scope until it collapsed in 1988. (It was rebuilt as a 100 meter dish in 2000.)

Although first light for the 40″ was Jupiter, E. E. Barnard later discovered the third companion star to Vega using the Yerkes refractor. First “light” studies at Green Bank were a radio source galaxy and pulsar for NRAO. Tonight we’re going to turn our attention toward Pegasus and the incredible M15. Although we don’t have that much aperture to study with tonight, we can still get a very satisfactory look at M15 through any size binoculars or telescope.

You can find it easily just about two fingerwidths northwest of red Epsilon Pegasi (Enif). Shining brightly at magnitude 6.4, low power users will find it a delightfully tight ball of stars, but scope users will find it quite unique. As resolution begins, sharp-eyed observers will note the presence of a planetary nebula – Pease 1. This famous X-ray source you have just seen with your eyes may have supernovae remnants buried deep inside…

Tuesday, October 2 – If you’re up before dawn this morning, take a look at the Moon. You’ll find the “Red Planet” – Mars – less than a fistwidth south!

Tonight’s destination is not an easy one, but if you have a 6″ or larger scope, you’ll fall in love at first sight! Let’s head for Eta Pegasi and slightly more than four degrees north-northeast for NGC 7331.

This beautiful, 10th magnitude, tilted spiral galaxy is very much how our own Milky Way would appear if we could travel 50 million light-years away and look back. Very similar in structure to both our own Milky Way and the Great Andromeda Galaxy, this particular galaxy gains more and more interest as scope size increases – yet it can be spotted with larger binoculars. At around 8″ in aperture, a bright core appears and the beginnings of wispy arms. In the 10″ to 12″ range, spiral patterns begin to emerge and with good seeing conditions, you can see “patchiness” in structure as nebulous areas are revealed, and the western half is deeply outlined with a dark dustlane. But hang on…

Because the best is yet to come!

Wednesday, October 3 – Tonight return to NGC 7331 with all the aperture you have. What we are about to look at is truly a challenge and requires dark skies, optimal position and excellent conditions. Now breathe the scope about one half a degree south-southwest and behold one of the most famous galaxy clusters in the night.

In 1877, French astronomer Edouard Stephan was using the first telescope designed with a coated mirror when he discovered something a bit more with NGC 7331. He found a group of nearby galaxies! This faint gathering of five is now known as “Stephan’s Quintet” and its members are no further apart than the diameter of our own Milky Way galaxy.

Visually in a large scope, these members are all rather faint, but their proximity is what makes them such a curiosity. The Quintet is made up of five galaxies numbered NGC 7317, 7318, 7318A, 7318B, 7319 and the largest is 7320. Even with a 12.5″ telescope, this author has never seen them as much more than tiny, barely-there objects that look like ghosts of rice grains on a dinner plate. So why bother? Because I’ve seen them with large aperture…

What our backyard equipment can never reveal is what else exists within this area – more than 100 star clusters and several dwarf galaxies. Some 100 million years ago, the galaxies collided and left long streamers of their materials which created star forming regions of their own, and this tidal pull keeps them connected. The stars within the galaxies themselves are nearly a billion years old, but between them lie much younger ones. Although we cannot see them, you can make out the soft sheen of the galactic nuclei of our interacting group.

Enjoy their faint mystery!

Thursday, October 4 – Today in 1957, the USSR’s Sputnik 1 made space history as it became the first manmade object to orbit the earth. The Earth’s first artificial satellite was tiny, roughly the size of a basketball, and weighed no more than the average man. Every 98 minutes it swung around Earth in its elliptical orbit…and changed everything. It was the beginning of the “Space Race.” Many of us old enough to remember Sputnik’s grand passes will also recall just how inspiring it was. Take the time with your children or grandchildren to check heavens-above.com for visible passes of the ISS and think about how much our world has changed in just 50 years!

Tonight we’re headed towards the southwest corner star of the Great Square of Pegasus – Alpha. Our goal will be 11th magnitude NGC 7479 located about 3 degrees south (RA 23:04.9 Dec +12:19).

Discovered by Sir William Herschel in 1784 and cataloged as H I.55, this barred spiral galaxy can be spotted in average telescopes and comes to beautiful life with larger aperture. Also known as Caldwell 44 on Sir Patrick Moore’s observing list, what makes this galaxy special is its delicate “S” shape. Smaller scopes will easily see the central bar structure of this 105 million light-year distant island universe, and as aperture increases, the western arm will become more dominant. This arm itself is a wonderful mystery – containing more mass than it should and a turbulent structure. It is believed that perhaps a minor merger may have at one time occurred, yet no evidence of a companion galaxy can be found.

On July 27, 1990, a supernova occurred near NGC 7479’s nucleus and reached a magnitude of 16. When observed in the radio band, there is a polarized jet near the bright nucleus that is unlike any other structure known. If at first you do not see a great deal of detail, relax… Allow your mind and eye time to look carefully. Even with telescopes as small as 8-10″ structure can easily be seen. The central bar becomes “clumpy” and this well-studied Seyfert region is home to an abundance of molecular gas and forming stars.

Enjoy this incredible galaxy…

Friday, October 5 – Today marks the birthdate of Robert Goddard. Born 1882, Goddard is known as the father of modern rocketry – and with good reason.

In 1907, Goddard came into the public eye as a cloud of smoke erupted from the basement of the physics building in Worcester Polytechnic Institute where he had just fired a powder rocket. By 1914, he had patented the use of liquid rocket fuel and two- or three-stage solid fuel rockets. His work continued as he sought methods of putting equipment ever higher, and by 1920 he had envisioned his rockets reaching the Moon. Among his many achievements, he proved that a rocket would work in a vacuum, and by 1926 the first scientific equipment went along for the ride. By 1932, Goddard was guiding those flights and by 1937 had the motors pivoting on gimbals and controlled gyroscopically. His lifetime of work went pretty much unnoticed until the dawn of the Space Age, but in 1959 (14 years after his death) he received his acclaim at last as NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center was established in his memory.

Today in 1923, Edwin Hubble was also busy as he discovered the first Cepheid variable in M31 – the Andromeda Galaxy. Hubble’s discovery was crucial in proving that objects once classed as “spiral nebulae” were actually independent and external stellar systems like our own Milky Way.

Tonight let’s look at a Cepheid variable as we head towards Eta Aquilae, almost a fistwidth due south of bright Altair.

Discovered by Edward Pigott in 1784, Eta is a Cepheid variable star around 1200 light-years away, but its beauty can be followed easily with the unaided eye. Ranging almost a full magnitude in a period of slightly over 7 days, this yellow supergiant is 3000 times brighter than our own Sun and around 60 times larger. Watch over the days as it takes about 48 hours to achieve maximum brightness and rivals nearby Beta – then falls slowly over the next 5 days.

Saturday, October 6 – While time and the stars appear to stand still and astronomical twilight begins earlier each night, let’s take one last look at the exiting constellation of Sagittarius. Our study for this evening is strictly a telescopic challenge for skilled observers. Set your sights about 2 degrees northeast of easy double 54 Sagittarii and around 7 degrees west of Beta Capricorni (RA 19 44 57.80 Dec -14 48 11.0) and let’s have a look at NGC 6822.

Often referred to as “Barnard’s Galaxy,” for its discoverer (E. E. Barnard – 1884), this unusual customer is actually a member of our local galaxy group. For the 4″ to 6″ telescope, this 11th magnitude, 1.7 million light-year distant object will not be easy, but it can be achieved with good conditions. Lower power is essential in even larger scopes, and those into the 12″ to 16″ range will see NGC 6822 burst into stunning resolution. This author has found that “Barnard’s Galaxy” almost appears like an open cluster overlaid with nebulosity, but the experienced eye will clearly see that the “shine” behind the stars is galactic in nature. It’s a very clumpy and unusual galaxy – one that I think you will very much enjoy. Be sure to look for small, pale blue, 10th magnitude planetary nebula NGC 6818 in the same field to the north-northwest. This pair rocks!

Sunday, October 7 – Today celebrates the birthday of Niels Bohr. Born 1885, Bohr was a pioneer Danish atomic physicist. If Niels were alive today, he’d be out early looking at the beautiful sight of Saturn, Venus and Regulus and the crescent Moon grouping together and gracing the predawn skies. It’s worth getting up for! For some lucky viewers, Regulus is so close to the Moon that it could be an occultation event. Be sure to check IOTA.

Now let’s get some practice in Capricornus as tonight we’ll take on a more challenging target with confidence. Locate the centermost bright star in the northern half of the constellation – Theta – because we’re headed for the “Saturn Nebula.”

Three finger-widths north of Theta you will see dimmer Nu, and only one finger-width west is NGC 7009 (RA 21 04 10.88 Dec -11 21 48.3). This wonderful blue planetary is around 8th magnitude and achievable in small scopes and large binoculars. NGC 7009 was the first discovery of Sir William Herschel on September 7, 1782 – the night he started his sky survey – and he cataloged it as H IV.1. Sir William’s original notes describe it as: “very bright nearly round planetary, not well-defined disk.”

When viewed by Lord Rosse in the 1840s, he gave it the nickname Saturn Nebula, and it is considered one of the nine Struve rare celestial objects. Also known as Bennett 127 and Caldwell 55, it is generally believed to be around 2400 light-years away – but not so far that it doesn’t make about every list known as an all time great!

Even at moderate magnification, you will see the elliptical shape which gave rise to its moniker. With larger scopes, those “ring like” projections become even clearer as the 11th magnitude central star becomes apparent. No matter which aperture you choose, this challenging object is well worth the hunt. You can do it!

Astrosphere for September 28th, 2007

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Today’s space photo was captured by Phil22. I don’t I have to tell you that it’s the Horsehead Nebula.

First some sad news. The life of a young space blogger was ended in a motorcycle accident a couple of days ago. Matt Bowes was the mind behind Space Liberates Us!; an extremely well-written blog. Matt’s blog was one of the ones I was following every day, and I had no idea he was only 19. The obituary is here. Thanks to Clark, Keith and Rand for the heads up on this.

He’s both a rocket scientist and an astronaut. MIT Technology review has an interview with Franklin Chang Diaz discussing his plasma rocket research.

The launch of Dawn brings another ion engine into space. Centauri Dreams wonders when we’ll see solar sails propel a spacecraft.

If you listen to the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, you’ll be pleased to hear that Skepchick Rebecca Watson has won a fierce competition to get her own public radio show. If you need a guest Rebecca… call me. 😉

Do you have a space-related blog? Email me your URL, and I’ll start watching you. Write something interesting, and I’ll link to it.

Exotic Collision Releases a Blast of Radio Waves

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It’s not every day that you see something completely new in the night sky. But that’s what Australian and US researchers have announced this week. They uncovered a mysterious burst of radio energy that came from outside our galaxy. It was incredibly bright, emanating from a tiny object, and lasted for only 5 milliseconds. Blink and you would have missed it (actually, don’t bother blinking, you’d still miss it). So, the big question is: what was that?!

Astronomers from Swinburne University and West Virginia University announced their unexpected discovery this week, with an article in the journal Science.

Their discovery was made by chance. The researchers were analyzing radio observations of rotating pulsars – the corpses of massive stars – when they noticed a brief, bright flash of radio waves in their images. They were looking at the Small Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy, and were fortunate to have the flash occur in their field of view; off to the side away from the galaxy.

Based on their further analysis, whatever made the flash of radio waves is millions of light-years away, well outside the galaxy, and tiny; probably less than 1,500 km across. Objects at this distance should be very faint, but what they found overwhelmed the radio telescope’s detectors.

So what was it?

There are two theories on the table right now. One is a collision between a binary pair of neutron stars. These exotic objects were once stars much larger than our own Sun. After both detonated as supernovae, they spiraled inward towards one another, eventually merging. Astronomers think this event can also cause a certain kind of gamma ray burst, but a flash of radio waves has never been seen before.

Another, even more exotic explanation is the death of black hole. Famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking proposed that black holes can actually evaporate, losing mass over long periods of time. As the black hole loses mass, the evaporation speeds up, and the last few moments of a black hole could actually go quite quickly, perhaps with a flash of radio waves like this.

Based on the fact that the discovery was a total coincidence, the astronomers are hopeful that this kind of event is happening all over the sky, all the time. Astronomers have just never thought to look for them. It’s possible that this discovery could even open up a whole new field of astronomy, just like when gamma ray bursts were first discovered 30 years ago when the military orbited satellites designed to see nuclear explosions on the Earth.

Original Source: Swinburne University News Release

Deep Impact… the Second Visit

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When Deep Impact smashed into Comet Tempel 1, it did its job well… too well. Yes, it did carve out a crater on the surface of the comet, releasing a plume of debris visible from here on Earth. But there was a problem. The impact released so much debris into space that the spacecraft couldn’t see the surface of the comet before it sped by. No problem, there’s another handy spacecraft out there, with all the right equipment and nothing to do: Stardust.

Why wasn’t Deep Impact able to see the crater it had just helped carve out of Comet Tempel 1? That was all part of the plan. Researchers wanted to be able to measure the cloud of particles ejected into space after the impact. In order to do that, they needed the flyby spacecraft to pass the comet moments after the impact; to get the best view of the dust. Deep Impact was traveling so quickly that it just swept past and back out into space.

But what size and depth of crater was left behind?

That’s still a mystery that astronomers want solved. Fortunately, NASA’s Stardust spacecraft is in an orbit that will let it rendezvous with Comet Tempel 1 in the future. This was the spacecraft that flew through the tail of Comet Wild 2 in 2004, capturing particles and returning them back to Earth. Stardust released its payload to return to Earth safely, but it remained in space, looking for another task. The spacecraft will be given a new trajectory, burning up some of its remaining fuel.

Obviously, recycling a spacecraft like this can be done at a huge discount to sending a new vehicle up. You just have the operating costs for people; you’re looking at 15% the cost of doing a full mission.

Stardust will arrive in 2011, almost exactly one-cometary year after Deep Impact did the damage in the first place. The dust cloud will have dissipated away into space, and Stardust will have a good view down into the crater. Scientists will also learn what kind kind of changes the Sun will have on the new wound.

The original Deep Impact spacecraft is going to be recycled too. NASA has plans to fly it past Comet Boethin in December 2008 to examine that comet’s nucleus. It will even be tasked to help search for extrasolar planets, by using its sensitive instruments to watch for planets dimming stars as they pass in front.

Original Source: Science@NASA