NASA's deep impact

[LightningGSX]

About 5-6 hours ago, NASA's deep impact spacecraft released its impactor which will ,in just under 18 hours from now, crash into comet Tempel 1 .The impact may make the comet bright enough to see with just binoculars.Nothing beats America smashing a comet on the 4th of July.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/de...ain/index.html
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2...deepimpact.htm
http://www.spaceweather.com/glossary/deepimpact.htm

[Jana]

Wow, it's Armegeddon for real....

What happens if they mis-aligned, and the comet keeps going....????

[Enes]

it will just keep going on its way, they will be doing the impact once it passes the earth so that there is no way it could affect the Earth.

What really confuses me is that even after they do impact it they will just have pictures, how much can pictures tell, they would want/need asteroids core samples after the impact, and since its the closest body to the impact any debree from it will continue to follow the meteor.

i guess pictures will be able to tell some, but not all.

-E

[KcGsXrated]

Originally Posted by Enes

it will just keep going on its way, they will be doing the impact once it passes the earth so that there is no way it could affect the Earth.

What really confuses me is that even after they do impact it they will just have pictures, how much can pictures tell, they would want/need asteroids core samples after the impact, and since its the closest body to the impact any debree from it will continue to follow the meteor.

i guess pictures will be able to tell some, but not all.

-E

That is true, Enes. How is it possible to know what and how everything happened through pictures. Im a firm believer in what i see might be true but thats kind of taking it to the extreme.

[Jana]

Ok, I missed the part that it was not heading for earth.

[LightningGSX]

NASA calls it "An experiment in planetary protection". Other than pics, deep impact will also measure the composition of the comet.The pictures will tell us alot in this case, crater size, plume, etc.It will at least give us SOME data on the possibility of diverting/destroying a comet on a collision course with us.Because somewhere, THERE IS a comet that is on a collision course with earth, and there's no doubt about it.

On a side note, I'm suprised there weren't more conspiracy theories about this one.

[Enes]

july 4th.. it had to be part of it

they want to have extra terrestrial fireworks!