Stardust-NExT, Revisiting Tempel 1 |
Stardust-NExT, Revisiting Tempel 1 |
Dec 28 2010, 01:46 PM
Post
#1
|
|
Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1729 Joined: 3-August 06 From: 43° 35' 53" N 1° 26' 35" E Member No.: 1004 |
I thought it was time to start a new thread on Stardust's flyby of Tempel 1, the first time a comet receives a second visit from a spacecraft one perihelion later.
There was an interesting story about this on Spaceflight now recently http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1012/23stardustnext/ note that the flyby will be around 23.30 eastern time on 14 February, so thinking in GMT it will not happen on Valentine's day. Stardust should have started imaging Tempel 1 twice weekly in mid-December, but there is nothing yet on the mission site http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html see also http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/m...tatus10_q4.html for updates on the mission status |
|
|
Feb 10 2011, 04:07 AM
Post
#2
|
|
Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14448 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
They have made a simulated light curve based on DI data, and have an actual light curve based on Hubble imagery. From that - there is a correlation, but also there's another correlation at 180 deg from that, just not quite as strong.
Thus - they targetted to get the nucleus on approach ( http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/May07/stardust-NExT.jpg ) but it's not certain that they'll see it. It's not quite 50/50 - probably slightly better odds than that. Of course, the comet may have changed so much over the past 5 years that we can't even tell if we're looking at the same side or not A Stardust NExT 'Live' module will be on Eyes on the Solar System before Monday night ( http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eyes ) including a nucleus shape file with a map showing the expected crater, and the un-seen terrain. Yours truly will be demoing it during the first of the NASA TV broadcasts from JPL on the night of the flyby |
|
|
Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 31st October 2024 - 11:40 PM |
RULES AND GUIDELINES Please read the Forum Rules and Guidelines before posting. IMAGE COPYRIGHT |
OPINIONS AND MODERATION Opinions expressed on UnmannedSpaceflight.com are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of UnmannedSpaceflight.com or The Planetary Society. The all-volunteer UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderation team is wholly independent of The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has no influence over decisions made by the UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderators. |
SUPPORT THE FORUM Unmannedspaceflight.com is funded by the Planetary Society. Please consider supporting our work and many other projects by donating to the Society or becoming a member. |