Stardust-NExT Will Capture Dozens Of Images Of Comet Tempel
1
NASA's Stardust-NExT spacecraft is nearing a celestial date
with comet Tempel 1 at approximately 2337 EST, on Feb. 14. The
mission will allow scientists for the first time to look for
changes on a comet's surface that occurred following an orbit
around the sun.
The Stardust-NExT, or New Exploration of Tempel, spacecraft will
take high-resolution images during the encounter, and attempt to
measure the composition, distribution, and flux of dust emitted
into the coma, or material surrounding the comet's nucleus. Data
from the mission will provide important new information on how
Jupiter-family comets evolved and formed.
The mission will expand the investigation of the comet initiated
by NASA's Deep Impact mission. In July 2005, the Deep Impact
spacecraft delivered an impactor to the comet's surface to study
its composition. The Stardust spacecraft may capture an image of
the crater created by the impactor. This would be an added bonus to
the huge amount of data that mission scientists expect to
obtain.
"Every day we are getting closer and closer and more and more
excited about answering some fundamental questions about comets,"
said Joe Veverka, Stardust-NExT principal investigator at Cornell
University. "Going back for another look at Tempel 1 will provide
new insights on how comets work and how they were put together
four-and-a-half billion years ago."
At approximately 209 million miles away from Earth,
Stardust-NExT will be almost on the exact opposite side of the
solar system at the time of the encounter. During the flyby, the
spacecraft will take 72 images and store them in an on board
computer. Initial raw images from the flyby will be sent to Earth
for processing that will begin at approximately 0300 EST on Feb.
15. Images are expected to be available at approximately 0430
EST.
As of today, the spacecraft is approximately 15.3 million miles
away from its encounter. Since 2007, Stardust-NExT executed eight
flight path correction maneuvers, logged four circuits around the
sun and used one Earth gravity assist to meet up with Tempel 1.
Another three maneuvers are planned to refine the spacecraft's path
to the comet. Tempel 1's orbit takes it as close in to the sun as
the orbit of Mars and almost as far away as the orbit of Jupiter.
The spacecraft is expected to fly past the 3.7 mile-wide comet at a
distance of approximately 124 miles.
In 2004, the Stardust mission became the first to collect
particles directly from comet Wild 2, as well as interstellar dust.
Samples were returned in 2006 for study via a capsule that detached
from the spacecraft and parachuted to the ground southwest of Salt
Lake City. Mission controllers placed the still viable Stardust
spacecraft on a trajectory that could potentially reuse the flight
system if a target of opportunity presented itself. In January
2007, NASA re-christened the mission Stardust-NExT and began a
four-and-a-half year journey to comet Tempel 1.
Stardust-NExT NASA Image
"You could say our spacecraft is a seasoned veteran of cometary
campaigns," said Tim Larson, project manager for Stardust-NExT at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "It's
been half-way to Jupiter, executed picture-perfect flybys of an
asteroid and a comet, collected cometary material for return to
Earth, then headed back out into the void again, where we asked it
to go head-to-head with a second comet nucleus."
The mission team expects this flyby to write the final chapter
of the spacecraft's success-filled story. The spacecraft is nearly
out of fuel as it approaches 12 years of space travel, logging
almost 3.7 billion miles since launch in 1999. This flyby and
planned post-encounter imaging are expected to consume the
remaining fuel.
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