Stardust + Deep Impact mission extensions, ...two new comet flybys approved Options

[dmuller]

You can also try http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/ ... if it was on NASA TV then it should be there (right now though the site seems to be down)

[Paolo]

Tempel targeting burn successful
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?rele...mp;auid=5956241

[Explorer1]

Looks more and more likely that the Crater Contest will finally have a belated winner.
http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/comet_crater/

Good luck Stardust team!

[elakdawalla]

Gosh, thanks for the reminder on that, Explorer1. It had totally wandered off my radar screen. Wonder if we still have that entrant database lying around anywhere...

[Explorer1]

Gosh, thanks for the reminder on that, Explorer1. It had totally wandered off my radar screen. Wonder if we still have that entrant database lying around anywhere...

Are there still prizes left after the 3 randomly selected winners? I regret not participating when I had the chance...
Only a year to go!

[elakdawalla]

No, we gave out the prizes, it wouldn't have been the right thing to do to declare no winner. But I know a lot of people were dissatisfied with the resolution of the contest (not the least of whom, I'd say, were the scientists), so there's going to be a lot of public interest in what Stardust sees.

What they expect to see is nicely summarized here.

[Explorer1]

It's pretty incredible that we can predict what part of an object is sunlit years after it was seen close up. As long as as Tempel hasn't changed much in the intervening years...

[Phil Stooke]

Here's a little cartographic experiment I've been playing around with. This is a preliminary version of a map of the nucleus of Comet Tempel-1 using Deep Impact images. The main part of the map is based on the image mosaic available on the Deep Impact site, reprojected by using a version of the image with a lat-long grid which is also on their site. Zero longitude is in the middle.

But unlike the version of this map published in a paper in Icarus by Peter Thomas and colleagues, I have extended this with the image of the departing view of the nucleus - that's the sliver running up to the north pole. Its position is only approximate. The Icarus version of the map had an extension around the south pole as well, but it was not very nicely dealt with. Here I have improved the representation of that area by going back to the raw data. This is an area beyond the nominal terminator which was illuminated by sunlight reflected off the impact plume itself, showing up beautifully in the Medium res images.

I will be doing all this again with better processing and more images next year some time.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

... and here is one of those images of the south polar area, high pass filtered. The impact plume itself hides part of the nucleus. The limb of the nucleus is faintly visible on the dark side. Image number is in the file name if you save it.

Phil