Parkbandit
01-12-2005, 03:00 PM
Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- NASA today sent its $267 million Deep Impact spacecraft on a mission to blow a football stadium-sized crater in a comet orbiting between Earth and Mars.
The 2,152-pound Ball Corp.-built spacecraft left Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a Boeing Co. Delta II rocket at 1:47 p.m. The launch was broadcast live on NASA Television.
Deep Impact will travel about 268 million miles (431 million kilometers) to the comet Tempel 1. On July 4, the spacecraft is to launch an 820-pound, 1-meter by 1-meter copper projectile toward the nucleus of the passing comet.
The projectile is expected to strike at a speed of about 22,800 miles per hour and blast a hole as big as 100 meters wide, NASA said.
Scientists theorize that comets are made up of the original elements from which the planets formed and they hope that studying debris from the explosion will help them understand how the solar system began.
``Comets are the most primitive bodies in our solar system, and they are made up of the very material from which the planets and the sun, in fact, are made,'' said Andrew Dantzler, director of the solar system division at NASA headquarters, in a televised press briefing yesterday.
"They have preserved this material since the creation of solid bodies in the solar system,'' he said.
The 2,152-pound Ball Corp.-built spacecraft left Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a Boeing Co. Delta II rocket at 1:47 p.m. The launch was broadcast live on NASA Television.
Deep Impact will travel about 268 million miles (431 million kilometers) to the comet Tempel 1. On July 4, the spacecraft is to launch an 820-pound, 1-meter by 1-meter copper projectile toward the nucleus of the passing comet.
The projectile is expected to strike at a speed of about 22,800 miles per hour and blast a hole as big as 100 meters wide, NASA said.
Scientists theorize that comets are made up of the original elements from which the planets formed and they hope that studying debris from the explosion will help them understand how the solar system began.
``Comets are the most primitive bodies in our solar system, and they are made up of the very material from which the planets and the sun, in fact, are made,'' said Andrew Dantzler, director of the solar system division at NASA headquarters, in a televised press briefing yesterday.
"They have preserved this material since the creation of solid bodies in the solar system,'' he said.