[meteorite-list] Deep Impact/EPOXI Burns for Home, Then Comet

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2010 17:18:06 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201006020018.o520I6DP006107_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-185

NASA Spacecraft Burns for Home, Then Comet
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
May 28, 2010

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Deep Impact/Epoxi spacecraft has successfully
performed a trajectory correction maneuver to refine its orbit prior to
an upcoming Earth flyby June 27. The maneuver, along with the Earth
flyby, will place the spacecraft on a trajectory to fly past comet
Hartley 2 on Nov. 4.

The maneuver began at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. PST) today, when the
spacecraft fired its engines for 11.3 seconds. While the burn changed
the spacecraft's velocity by only 0.1 meters per second (less than a
quarter mile per hour), that was all the mission's navigators requested
to set the stage for an Earth gravity assist on June 27.

"While it was a small burn, it was a big step in getting us to Hartley
2," said Tim Larson, project manager of NASA's Epoxi mission.
"Humanity's fifth close-up view of a comet is less than five months away."

Epoxi is an extended mission of the Deep Impact spacecraft. Its name is
derived from its two tasked science investigations -- the Deep Impact
Extended Investigation (DIXI) and the Extrasolar Planet Observation and
Characterization (EPOCh).

The University of Maryland is the Principal Investigator institution.
JPL manages Epoxi for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies
Corp., Boulder, Colo.

For information about Epoxi, visit http://www.nasa.gov/epoxi.

D.C. Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif
agle at jpl.nasa.gov

2010-185
Received on Tue 01 Jun 2010 08:18:06 PM PDT