The date of Deep Impact's encounter with Comet Temple-1 is fast approaching

Deep Impact will dig a crater on the comet nucleus

The American spacecraft Deep Impact will jump into orbit to launch the projectile to the comet on July 4. The spacecraft, traveling at 100 times the speed of a rifle bullet, is expected to dig a hole in the heart of the spacecraft rock and eject ice and dust.

Analysis of the primordial matter, a remnant of that which filled the solar system at its formation, can shed light on the origins of the planets. The impact is expected on July 4 at 05:52 GMT (08:52 Israel time).

The day before, the mothership will release a small copper projectile that will propel itself toward comet Temple-1, a ball of ice, rock, and dust the size of the island of Manhattan. Cameras on the projectile and in the mother ship will analyze the gases and fragments that fly away.

Rick Grammier, project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., says the maneuvers are challenging. "In our search for worthwhile scientific information, we are trying something that has never been done at speeds and distances that are out of this world," he said.

"It is a rifle bullet trying to hit a second bullet with the help of a third bullet, at the right time and in the right place, to look at the first two bullets and collect the scientific data from this vulnerability." said. Mission scientists say they expect to resolve a technical glitch that caused the spacecraft to take blurry pictures from one of the instruments. The engineers will use a mathematical processing process for the images after they are sent to Earth.
Deep Impact took 6 months to travel about 431 million kilometers from Earth for a mission with the same name as a 1998 Hollywood movie, in which astronauts try to stop a comet from hitting Earth. Deep Impact seeks to peer beneath the surface of a comet, into material that has remained unchanged since the birth of the planets.

Hubble will watch Deep Impact

The Hubble Space Telescope will watch when a projectile launched by the Deep Impact spacecraft collides with Comet Temple-1 on July 04 in a cosmic D-Nor fireworks display that may also be visible from Earth.

The best view is of course expected to be from the spacecraft itself, but senior officials at the Space Telescope Institute coordinating the use of Hubble say that they are ready for anything. "We will be here and work" said Cheryl Gundy, spokeswoman for the Space Telescope Institute.

Habel also mourned at the time the crash of Comet Shoemaker Levi 9 on Jupiter in 1994 and "it had good results. We hope for something similar this time," said Gandhi.