NASA had to announce the end of the mission that lasted almost nine years, during which the spacecraft launched a projectile that collided with a comet and threw materials from its shell, observed other comets and even planets outside the solar system
After almost nine years in space, the Deep Impact mission ended, when its highlights were a projectile shot to hit one comet, a flyby of a second comet, and the transmission of about half a million images of celestial objects.
The project team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California unenthusiastically announced that the mission had come to an end after being unable to contact the spacecraft for over a month. The last contact with Deep Impact was on August 8, 2013. Deep Impact was the largest comet hunter in history after swallowing 7.6 million km.
"Deep Impact was a fantastic spacecraft that survived a long time and produced much more data than we planned," says Mike O'Hearn, principal investigator of the Deep Impact mission at the University of Maryland in College Park. "She caused a revolution in our understanding of comets and their activity."
Deep Impact successfully completed its complicated original mission in six months in 2005 - investigating the surface and internal composition of a comet, and a follow-up mission with a flyby of another comet and observation of planets around other stars between July 2007 and December 2010. Since then, the spacecraft has continued to serve as a deep space observatory, To photograph the planets and collect some data on some occasional targets using the telescope and the instruments the spacecraft was equipped with.
The spacecraft was launched in January 2005 and flew about 430 million kilometers until it came close to the comet Temple 1. On July 3, 2005, the spacecraft launched a projectile into the orbit of the comet that collided with Galaino on July 4. This caused materials below the core's surface to fly into space so that they could be examined by the telescope and other instruments of the passing spacecraft. 16 days after the encounter with the comet, the spacecraft team placed it on a flight path back to Earth and in 2007 he aimed it at another comet - Hartley 2 where it arrived in November 2010.
"Six months after launch, this spacecraft has already completed its planned mission to study comet Temple 1," says Tim Larson, director of the Deep Impact project at JPL. "However, the scientific team continued to look for interesting things to do, and although the wisdom of our crew members in navigation and the support of NASA's Project Discovery personnel, the spacecraft continued to operate for another eight years and provided amazing results all along the way."
The spacecraft's extended mission culminated in a successful flyby of Comet Hartley 2 on November 4, 2010. Along the way, it also observed six different stars and confirmed the motion of the planets around them as well as photographed Earth, the Moon and Mars. These data helped to confirm the existence of water on the moon and were an attempt to confirm the signature of methane in the Martian atmosphere. One sequence of breathtaking images showed the moon passing by the Earth.
In January 2012, Deep Impact photographed comet C/2009 P1 (Garad) and in June of this year (2013) it managed to take the first images of comet Ison.
After losing communication with the spacecraft last month, control crew members spent several weeks trying to broadcast to it to restart its systems. The exact reason for the loss of the spacecraft is unknown. NASA estimates that this is a malfunction in the computer's time marking system that could lead to a loss of control over Deep Impact's direction. This may affect the direction of the radio antennas and make communication difficult, as well as the location of the solar collectors which in turn will prevent the spacecraft from receiving the power needed for heating, and the cooling of the space may destroy the equipment, and freeze the battery and propulsion systems.
Despite the unexpected ending, Deep Impact has already achieved much more than we ever anticipated.” said Lindley Johnson, director of the Discovery program at NASA Headquarters and responsible for the program starting a year before launch. "Deep Impact caused a revolution in the way we thought about comets and also provided a treasure trove of data for the planetary sciences, which will serve as a source of research for years.
For information on the NASA website
Live updates from the Deep Impact mission - as reported on the Hidaan website in July 2005
About the second big mission of Deep Impact - a pass by Comet Hartley 2
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The Dark Knight
What would NASA do without the advice of a genius like you? 🙂
Shows how much you understand 🙂
Indeed, as I felt, 7.6 million km is too close for 9 years of operation, and the distance it traveled is 7.6 billion km - 1000 times. It is worth paying attention to the video of the moon's passage across the surface of the NASA that it took from a distance of 50 million km "m" only in 2010 when approaching Kdva to use the slingshot effect of pulling Kdva.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/09/23/deep_impact_comet_probe_goes_dark.html?wpisrc=burger_bar
the knight Proper radio communication has no meaning for Rist.
Didn't we design a type of WATCH DOG that resets the system as soon as the connection is lost for a certain time?
(COMMUNICATION TIMEOUT as they say in the professional wheel)
With all due respect to the scientists there, losing communication sounds very amateurish on NASA's part!
Gobbling up 7.6 million square kilometers? Maybe 7.6 billion km?
This spacecraft is a classic example of the reuse of spacecraft for missions beyond the original target plan. The number of uses is the multiplier of the use of knowledge (on the weight of the multiplier of the use of money in the economy) and the great added value derived from it.
The public is asked to say a chapter of Psalms
Such an asteroid can be aimed at Mars, but it will not oppose it. Those that will be used as a satellite (moon). And thus there will be a source of raw materials such as water. Intermediate points for landing on Mars.