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LOS ANGELES - A comet-busting NASA spacecraft zipped past Earth on
Monday on its way to rendezvous with another comet in an extended
mission that will also see it hunt for Earth-sized planets around a
cluster of stars. The Deep Impact probe made the first of three
flybys designed to use the planet's gravity to hurtle the
spacecraft toward comet Hartley 2 for a 2010 meeting.
At its closest, the spacecraft was 10,000 miles above
Australia.
"We're taking laps around the sun until the comet comes," said
William Blume of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
In 2005, Deep Impact became the first spacecraft to crack open a
comet by releasing a copper impactor that smashed into Tempel 1,
giving scientists their first glimpse of the interior. The
mothership survived and was placed in safe mode before it was
tapped for an encore.
The new mission, known as Epoxi, calls for Deep Impact to meet
Hartley 2 about 12 million miles from Earth at the time of the
encounter. Deep Impact will hover 550 miles from the half mile-wide
surface and use its two telescopes and infrared spectrometer to map
features and record gas outbursts.
On its way to the comet, Deep Impact will spend six months using
one of its telescopes to search for Earth-sized planets around five
nearby stars, which are known to have Jupiter-like planets orbiting
them.
The extended mission, managed by JPL in Pasadena, cost $40 million,
compared to the $333 million it took to collide with Tempel
1.
NASA initially wanted Deep Impact's second act to be an exploration
of comet 85P/Boethin in 2008. But to scientists' surprise, a bevy
of ground and space telescopes were unable to spot it this fall.
Astronomers believe the comet may have shattered into specks too
small to be seen from Earth.
Mission managers then asked the space agency to change course and
visit Hartley 2 which required a path correction and an extra two
years of travel.
