[meteorite-list] EPOXI Successfully Flies by Comet Hartley 2

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2010 09:58:42 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201011041658.oA4Gwg1Y001075_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-371

NASA Mission Successfully Flies by Comet Hartley 2
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
November 04, 2010

PASADENA, CALIF. - NASA's EPOXI mission successfully flew by comet
Hartley 2 at about 7 a.m. PDT (10 a.m. EDT) today, and the spacecraft
has begun returning images. Hartley 2 is the fifth comet nucleus visited
by a spacecraft.

Scientists and mission controllers are currently viewing
never-before-seen images of Hartley 2 appearing on their computer
terminal screens.

"The mission team and scientists have worked hard for this day," said
Tim Larson, EPOXI project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif. "It's good to see Hartley 2 up close."

Mission navigators are working to determine the spacecraft's closest
approach distance. Preliminary estimates place the spacecraft close to
the planned-for 700 kilometers (435 miles). Eight minutes after closest
approach, at 6:59:47 a.m. PDT ( 9:59:47 a.m. EDT), the spacecraft's
high-gain antenna was pointed at Earth and began downlinking vital
spacecraft health and other engineering data stored aboard the
spacecraft's onboard computer during the encounter. About 20 minutes
later, the first images of the encounter made the 37-million-kilometer
(23-million-mile) trip from the spacecraft to NASA's Deep Space Network
antennas in Goldstone, Calif., appearing moments later on the mission's
computer screens.

"We are all holding our breath to see what discoveries await us in the
observations near closest approach," said EPOXI principal investigator
Michael A'Hearn of the University of Maryland, College Park.

A post-encounter news conference will be held at 1 p.m. PDT (4 p.m. EDT)
in the von Karman auditorium at JPL. It will be carried live on NASA TV.
Downlink and schedule information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.
The event will also be carried live on http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2.

EPOXI is an extended mission that utilizes the already "in-flight" Deep
Impact spacecraft to explore distinct celestial targets of opportunity.
The name EPOXI itself 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 has retained the name "Deep Impact."

JPL manages the EPOXI mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
Washington. The University of Maryland 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 818-354-5011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle at jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov

Lee Tune 301-405-4679
University of Maryland, College Park
ltune at umd.edu
Received on Thu 04 Nov 2010 12:58:42 PM PDT