Daily Curiosities: Nasa Bombed a Comet
POSTED by: on 10/13/2009
In late 2006, a Nasa probe, called Deep Impact, collided with the Tempel 1 comet. The resulting outgassing lasted for 13 days and released between 33 and 66 million pounds of matter.
The Deep Impact mission was instituted to learn more about the chemical makeup of comets. The spacecraft was made up of two parts, the flyby section and the impactor. The impactor hit the comet with the same force as an explosion of five tons of dynamite. The flyby section then flew through the plume of debris and collected data about it. The data was later radioed back to earth for analysis. The impactor also had a camera and recorded images until about 3 seconds before impact.
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