NASA Stardust Probe Hours From Valentine's Date With Comet Tempel 1

[Robert_Stephens]

This is rather incredible.

FoxNews.com - NASA Stardust Probe Hours From Valentine's Date With Comet Tempel 1

FAQ: Stardust-NExT Flyby of Comet Tempel 1 | Comets & Asteroids, Comet Photos | Comet Tempel 1, NASA Spacecraft | Space.com

This is going to be incredible. It will close within 115 miles of the comet. Years in planning, it is going to be quite a data event in the study of these Kuiper Belt Objects.

Another NASA mission, called Deep Impact, visited Tempel 1 back in 2005. But it did more than visit: Deep Impact slammed an impactor into Tempel 1's surface, then studied the ejected material to get an idea of what the comet is made of.

Researchers hope Stardust-NExT will give them an idea of how Tempel 1 has changed during this time. They also hope to get a good look at the crater Deep Impact created; the previous mission was not able to see it well, as the huge cloud of ejected debris obscured the new feature.

Robert

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says, "Yea, - first it was meteors - now dem space aliens is a-gonna fling comets at us...

Mysterious objects between Jupiter and Neptune identified as comets
Saturday 27th July, 2013 -- NASA says one of its science spacecraft has solved the mystery of small celestial bodies orbiting the sun between Jupiter and Neptune -- they're comets.

The true identity of the objects, dubbed centaurs, has been one of the enduring mysteries of astrophysics, the space agency said, with debate of whether they are asteroids or comets. Astronomers have long disagreed about whether centaurs are asteroids flung out from the inner solar system or comets traveling toward the sun from afar. Their mysterious dual nature saw them dubbed centaurs, after the creature in Greek mythology whose head and torso are human but whose body and legs are those of a horse.

Observations by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer found that most are comets, scientists said. "Just like the mythical creatures, the centaur objects seem to have a double life," said James Bauer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Our data point to a cometary origin for most of the objects, suggesting they are coming from deeper out in the solar system." The WISE instrument completed the largest infrared survey to date of centaurs and their more distant cousins, called scattered disk objects.

The color of many of the centaurs was also a clue to their composition, scientists said. "Comets have a dark, soot-like coating on their icy surfaces, making them darker than most asteroids," said study co-author Tommy Grav of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson. "Comet surfaces tend to be more like charcoal, while asteroids are usually shinier like the moon." The results indicate that roughly two-thirds of the centaur population are comets, the researchers said.

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Natural particle accelerators seen in radiation belts around Earth
Saturday 27th July, 2013 -- A massive, natural particle accelerator exists in the Van Allen radiation belts, a region of super-energetic particles surrounding Earth, U.S. scientists say.

Results from NASA's Van Allen Probes mission show the acceleration energy is in the belts themselves, as local variations in energy levels kick particles inside the belts to ever-faster speeds approaching 99 percent of the speed of light, the space agency reported Thursday.

Knowing the location of the acceleration within the radiation belts -- there are actually two Van Allen belts -- will help improve predictions of space weather, because changes in the radiation belts can be risky for satellites near Earth, scientists said.

Most satellite orbits are chosen to duck below the radiation belts or circle outside of them, but some satellites, such as GPS spacecraft, must operate between the two belts.

"Until the 1990s, we thought the Van Allen belts were pretty well-behaved and changed slowly," lead study author Geoff Reeves at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M., said. "With more and more measurements, however, we realized how quickly and unpredictably the radiation belts change. They are basically never in equilibrium, but in a constant state of change."

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