The American spacecraft Deep Impact managed to notice for the first time the comet towards which it is racing.
Avi Blizovsky
In the photo: Comet Temple-1 as photographed on April 25, 2005
The American spacecraft Deep Impact managed to notice for the first time the comet towards which it is racing.
The spacecraft photographed Comet Temple-1 from a distance of 64 million kilometers. The observation will help the spacecraft's navigators, engineers and scientists as they seek to bring it to a close encounter on July 4.
The spacecraft will launch a 372 kg missile from it into a collision course with the comet, and to dig a hole in our shells - to learn more about how these objects last.
Comets are "remnants" left over from the original material in the cloud of gas and dust that surrounded the young sun and from which the planets were formed 4.6 billion years ago.
The scientists hope that the mission will answer fundamental questions about the origin of the solar system through a better look at the nature and composition of ice balls, dust and frozen rocks.
"It was good to see the first image of the comet from our spacecraft," said the principal investigator of Deep Impact, Dr. Michael Ohern from the University of Maryland, USA.
During the month of May, daily observations will be made of Temple 1 and it will become bigger and more impressive as the spacecraft closes the gap.
Now the comet is only a few pixels in diameter, and on July 4th we'll get the best close-up images of a comet ever taken." said Ohran.
