[meteorite-list] NASA's Comet Mission May Face Multiple Jets Nov. 4

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2010 11:03:46 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201011021803.oA2I3kY3007927_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-365

NASA's Comet Mission May Face Multiple Jets Nov. 4
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
November 01, 2010

Two movies derived from images taken by the two cameras aboard NASA's
EPOXI mission spacecraft show comet Hartley 2 is, as expected, quite
active, and it provides information on the nucleus's rotation. The
spacecraft has been imaging Hartley 2 almost daily since Sept. 5, in
preparation for its scheduled Nov. 4 flyby of the comet.

"The comet brings us new surprises every day," said Michael A'Hearn,
EPOXI principal investigator from the University of Maryland, College
Park. "The data we have received to this point have been tremendous. It
is forcing us to rethink what we know about cometary science, and we are
still days away from encounter."

On Oct. 26, the spacecraft's two cameras, a High-Resolution Imager
(HRI), and a Medium-Resolution-Imager (MRI), caught two jets firing off
the comet's surface <http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=941>
over a 16-hour period. The spacecraft captured these images from a
distance of about 8 million kilometers (5 million miles) away. The data
lead mission scientists to believe that both jets originate from similar
latitudes on the comet's nucleus.

"These movies are excellent complements of one and other and really
provide some excellent detail of how a comet's jets operate," said
A'Hearn. "Observing these jets from EPOXI provides an entirely different
viewpoint from what is available for Earth-based observers and will
ultimately allow a proper three-dimensional reconstruction of the
environment surrounding the nucleus."

The name EPOXI is a combination of the names for the two extended mission
components: the extrasolar planet observations, called Extrasolar Planet
Observations and Characterization (EPOCh), and the flyby of comet
Hartley 2, called the Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI). The
spacecraft will continue to be referred to as "Deep Impact." The Deep
Impact mission successfully deployed a projectile into the path of comet
Tempel 1 in 1995. The spacecraft is being "recycled" for the comet
Hartley 2 flyby.

JPL manages the EPOXI mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
Washington. The University of Maryland, College Park, is home to the
mission's principal investigator, Michael A'Hearn. Drake Deming of
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., is the science lead
for the mission's extrasolar planet observations. The spacecraft was
built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.

For more information about EPOXI visit http://www.nasa.gov/epoxi and
http://epoxi.umd.edu/.

DC Agle 818-354-0474
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle at jpl.nasa.gov

2010-365
Received on Tue 02 Nov 2010 02:03:46 PM PDT