NASA’s Stardust probe came very close to comet Tempel 1 for the second time on February 14th 2011. This allows scientists to discover changes in the comet since the last visit. The time of closest approach was estimated around 04:40 UTC on February 15. Stardust went past the comet at a distance of 112 miles (181 km) and travelling at a relative speed of 24,300 mph (10.9 km per second).
NASA’s briefs video:
Animation video showing a series of images taken as stardust flew by:
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About Tempel 1 from wikipedia:
Tempel 1 (official designation: 9P/Tempel), is a periodic comet discovered by Wilhelm Tempel in 1867. It currently completes an orbit of the Sun every 5.5 years. Tempel 1 was the target of the Deep Impact space mission, which photographed a deliberate high-speed impact upon the comet in 2005. It was re-visited by the Stardust spacecraft on February 15, 2011.
More about Tempel 1 at wikipedia.
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| Tempel 1 as viewed by Stardust in 2011 |
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About NASA Stardust:
Stardust is a 300-kilogram robotic space probe launched by NASA on February 7, 1999 to study the asteroid 5535 Annefrank and collect samples from the coma of comet Wild 2. The primary mission was completed January 15, 2006, when the sample return capsule returned to Earth.[1] Operating for 12 years and 21 days, Stardust intercepted comet Tempel 1 on February 15, 2011, a small Solar System body previously visited by Deep Impact on July 4, 2005. It is the first sample return mission to collect cosmic dust and return the sample to Earth and the first to acquire images of a previously visited comet.
More about stardust at Wikipedia.
More details about
- Key Spacecraft Characteristics
- Propulsion
- Altitude control
- Command and data handling
- Telecommunications
- Power
- Thermal control
- Structure
- Redundancy and
- Whipple Shield at this Spacecraft details page.
About stardust launch: Stardust launch PDF.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Images from stardust:
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| Tempel 1 impact site |
This pair of images shows the before-and-after comparison of the part of comet Tempel 1 that was hit by the impactor from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft.
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| Comet Tempel 1 six years later |
More images at NASA Mission pages.
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Stardust did not only get images of the comet but also managed another breakthrough, it recorded the sound of a comet. Following video for the same:
An interesting video, “Its done with Math”, “B2 Bomber flying through flak”.
This was a bonus mission for stardust, which previously flew past comet Wild 2 and returned samples from its coma to Earth. During this bonus encounter, the plan called for the spacecraft to take images of the comet's surface to observe what changes occurred since a NASA spacecraft last visited. (NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft executed an encounter with Tempel 1 in July 2005).
Courtesy NASA.
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