In the late hours of July 3rd, NASA launched the 820-pound Deep Impact probe at comet Tempel 1, hoping to glean insight into the ancient ball of frozen dirt and water.
NASA attacking a comet may seem like asking for trouble, but astronomers universally agree Deep Impact’s mission is the best way to see the interior of a comet for the first time.
University of Maryland professor Michael A’Hearn, the principle investigator for the Deep Impact mission, said previous missions have been able to study the surface of a comet.
“No one has looked underneath before,” A’Hearn explained to a room of students and scientists via a webcast while watching images from the probe at the University of Maryland.
By observing the impact crater and how it develops, scientists hope to learn the basic structure and density of the comet. Material beneath the surface of the comet, relatively unchanged since the solar system’s formation, may answer questions about its birth.
Those thinking about the ramifications of attacking a comet need not be concerned, said Maryland Professor of astronomy Lee Mundy.
“The ratio of mass is very small,” Mundy said.
Mundy likens the probe’s impact on Tempel 1 to that of a mosquito hitting a 747 midflight.
Moments after the collision with the probe, a secondary satellite took position to observe and collect data from the emerging debris cloud created by the impact.
A portion of the debris cloud will be scanned by equipment onboard the observing satellite and analyzed by a team of astronomers from several universities.
The National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), located on the UA campus, is involved in the Deep Impact project. NOAO’s Kitt Peak Observatory in Southern Arizona hosted 55 guests on the night of Deep Impact.
Tony Farnham, Matthew Knight and Rob Swaters from the University of Maryland, and Beatrice Mueller and Nalin Samarasinha from the NOAO scientific staff led the scientific discussion.
Douglas Isbell, spokesperson for NOAO, said astronomers watched, along with 50 members of the public, as images were taken from NOAO’s Kitt Peak Visitor Center’s 20-inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope (RCOS) and an SBIG ST10XME CCD camera.
Isbell said it would be a while before all the data would be recorded and analyzed.