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Deep Impact: Comet whacking


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Deep Impact: Comet whacking
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curiousuburb
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Join Date: May 2004
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2005-06-30, 12:31

Not satisfied with earthly fireworks on July 4th?

How about an impact intended to vapourize a football stadium sized hole in a comet!



Space.com summarizes the mission

NASA official site

JPL mission page

Those who were participants in the Send Your Name to a Comet program can claim their message as orbital vapour after impact.

At this point, I've now sent names of relatives to Mars on the MER rovers, Comet Wild-2 via Stardust (due to return), and to Comet Tempel 1. Immortality of a sort via a program that sparks imagination and participation. Novel, and in this case, cool.

Folks who missed the earlier participatory activities can still play comet games...
Guess the crater size, win a prize

As for the impact itself, viewers in Western Canada and parts of the Pacific have a good shot at watching the show (skies permitting), so I'm crossing my fingers and polishing my binoculars for any flashes east of Spica around 10:52PM PDT on July 3rd.

Observing tips can be found here

NASA TV has the following press events scheduled:
Quote:
Deep Impact Press Encounter Events - Jul. 1 - 4
All times PDT.

Pre-impact briefing: July 1, 10 a.m.
Pre-impact update: July 3, 11 a.m.
NASA TV coverage: July 3, 8:30 p.m.
Expected time of impact: July 3, 10:52 p.m.
Post-impact briefing: July 4, 1 a.m.
Post-impact press conference: July 4, 11 a.m.
Regular teevee will be full of comet news for the next week as the general public clues in.

No need to put the torpedoes into the exhaust port, an impact on the surface is fine, Luke.

Last edited by curiousuburb : 2005-06-30 at 12:32.
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709
¡Damned!
 
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2005-07-02, 12:27

I cought something I thought was interesting about this the other day. I'd always assumed that the spacecraft and impactor were heading towards the comet on a collision course, but apparently that's not the case. In fact, the comet and the craft are heading in the same direction, only the craft is traveling around 20,000+ MPH slower. Not what I'd imagined...but somehow even more interesting.

Imagine being rear-ended at 20,000+ MPH!

So it goes.

Last edited by 709 : 2005-07-02 at 12:28.
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Moogs
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2005-07-02, 13:48

You mean faster? This could be really cool in the night sky. If we are able to see it I wonder how large it will appear relative to other stars and planets. It's obviously very far away so....

...into the light of a dark black night.
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709
¡Damned!
 
Join Date: May 2004
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2005-07-02, 13:55

comet: – – – – – – – – – O
craft:----------------------------- •

then:

– – – – O>•

then:

*SMASH*




* O and • not to scale.


(I promise I'm getting back to your DVD thread...I had to print the damn thing out to go over. )

So it goes.

Last edited by 709 : 2005-07-02 at 14:05.
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Amadeus
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Massachusetts
 
2005-07-02, 18:57

That is going to be an awesome sight. Hope that it will produce a lot of useful data. Truly fireworks from out of this world. I pray that all will go well with this mission.
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Moogs
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2005-07-03, 13:21

Evidently it will only be visible from the western US and then only with a telescope, if at all. Looking forward to seeing some awesome Hubble photos though and footage from the space craft as it passes by.

709: I wasn't kidding when I said War and Peace. I had a feeling it was going to entail several long posts because of the nature of the subject matter. I downloaded all the manuals at work and at home the other day... and that's clarified some things but it's only a start.

Once I'm actually getting underway I'll probably have so many questions that I'll have to break the posts down application by application or process by process. When it's all done though I will have strengthened one of my weaker areas and will have something very cool to show for it. I'll be sure to put "production assistance" credits on the last screen for "709" and "burb". Just to throw the clients for a loop.

...into the light of a dark black night.
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curiousuburb
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2005-07-03, 22:40

Deep Impact mission reports successful separation of its Impactor spacecraft.



On target for collision with the comet within 2.5 hours.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ has a timeline and links to more sites and webcasts.

First Spectrographic data is coming back... (click for details)


Last edited by curiousuburb : 2005-07-03 at 22:45.
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curiousuburb
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2005-07-03, 22:45

The Pre-Impact Live Commentary is starting on NASA TV now.

All spacecraft systems report green in advance of next clock timed events for AutoNav.

Lots of engineering com chatter if you're into that kind of thing.

2 hours to impact.

Goddamn clouds look to be moving in here after blue skies earlier inspired hope for clear seeing.

Fingers crossed I'll get a fortuitous observing gap as the event approaches.
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curiousuburb
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2005-07-03, 23:47

Impactor AutoNav is targeting and has completed its first of three scheduled burns.
(one at 90 mins out, one at 40, and a final trajectory correction at 12 minutes to impact)

AutoNav images are being downlinked (though they're not high res).

All systems are go.

Click for Flash Feature from NASA

Last edited by curiousuburb : 2005-07-03 at 23:48.
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FFL
Fishhead Family Reunited
 
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2005-07-03, 23:57

thanks for keeping us updated, 'burb. My DSL modem went out Friday night and I've been on dialup since then, so my webcast-viewing is a bit limited.
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curiousuburb
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2005-07-03, 23:58

NASA TV coverage has lots of engineering chatter, some nice Maas Digital animations, and various rocket scientists giving interviews during the commentary prior to impact.

Best webcast I can find is a 150Kbps Real10 stream
(if anybody has linkage to a higher bandwidth connection, please share.)

The NASA TV Landing page links to 150Kbps Real8 or 150Kbps Windows Media Streams

Last edited by curiousuburb : 2005-07-04 at 00:00.
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Mac+
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2005-07-03, 23:58

I watched a video documentary from one of those links above explaining what they were going to do. Talk about getting paid to play smash-up derby.

These geeks should be as happy as pigs in mud.
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atomicbartbeans
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2005-07-03, 23:59

So, can we watch this collision online?
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curiousuburb
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2005-07-04, 00:01

If you do see geek footage, they've cleverly assigned colour codes for shirts.

the red shirts are the impactor team (oh no!), blue shirts are flyby team, white shirts are management, the ESA guy is in banana yellow, but no shatner.
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curiousuburb
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2005-07-04, 00:06

Quote:
Originally Posted by atomicbartbeans
So, can we watch this collision online?
First high res images won't be down from the spacecraft for at least 40 minutes, and might not be released for as long as 6 hours as they need to be 'deconvolved', according to Dr. A'hearn at the press conference earlier. Should be released to the web quickly, but he's covering his ass.

The press conference schedule for NASA TV above is still pretty accurate, but nobody expects all times to stay rigid given the number of possible things that might occur. 1st post impact press briefing at 1am PDT tonight.

If you're asking whether the impact will be webcast live, yes mission control footage.
No, we're not likely to get realtime video from the nosecam of our cometary smartbomb.
But if it's a spectacular result, we'll get lots of images from scopes all over within a day or so.

Last edited by curiousuburb : 2005-07-04 at 00:08.
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curiousuburb
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2005-07-04, 00:25

Impactor Trajectory Maneuver # 2 has occurred. All systems look good.

They've released a raw picture from the Impactor camera (four quadrants of distinctly different brightness due to CCD, pre-deconvolving [fixing the out of focus error they discovered after launch])

More impressive, NASA TV showed one of the first images (through 8 filters) from the high-resolution camera. I can't see it on the gallery site yet, but it looks like the nucleus is relatively eggplant shaped with some large depressions or craters.

Sounds like the image processing turnaround is approaching 60 seconds from reception to 'public'.

One of the team science women mentioned the impactor dumps to the flyby for storage on NVRAM, and that they expect to fill one of the boards to 95% before dumping to the other NVRAM board and starting relay send to earth.

Camera rotation on one set of gimbals needs to be synched with high gain antenna pointing at earth on another set of gimbals.

Looking very optimistic at this point that they'll get spectacular results. Maybe 1m resolution.

That said, they expect the flyby spacecraft to go through a dust cloud, and all the rushed relay is in case the flyby doesn't survive. If it does, bonus.

Last edited by curiousuburb : 2005-07-04 at 00:27.
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curiousuburb
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2005-07-04, 00:41

Final Impactor Targeting Maneuver #3 completed.

11 minutes to impact. All systems go.
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onlyafterdark
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2005-07-04, 00:44

Damn infernal weather. I really wanted to see this thing too.
  quote
Res
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2005-07-04, 00:49

I think that the servers are overloaded, I cannot get any of the streaming broadcasts.
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onlyafterdark
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2005-07-04, 00:54

Ya Im sure they are. It will be all over the news tomorrow though so there is no worry.
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FFL
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2005-07-04, 00:58

real audio link is cutting in and out but I hear wild applause right now, so I guess we have impact C0NF1RMED!
  quote
curiousuburb
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2005-07-04, 00:59

And the partying begins... confirmation of impact!

And Damn Impressive Impact pictures!
  quote
Res
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2005-07-04, 01:00

Yep, it is a confirmed impact!
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Luca
ಠ_ರೃ
 
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2005-07-04, 01:00

For those of you who can't get the stream, here's the image of the impact taken by the flyby spacecraft:


Last edited by Luca : 2005-07-04 at 01:03.
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curiousuburb
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2005-07-04, 01:07

Before


After


Confirmation of Impact


Note clock differences and brightness graph changes in lower right

Last edited by curiousuburb : 2005-07-04 at 01:49.
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atomicbartbeans
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2005-07-04, 08:22

I hope they're keeping track of this thing after it got knocked by that satellite!

Wouldn't want to knock it off course and crash-land somewhere like France. Oh wait...

You ask me for a hamburger.
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staph
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2005-07-04, 08:36

I thought Americans were supposed to like the French? They even gave you that statue, and stuff.
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atomicbartbeans
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2005-07-04, 08:48

All in fun, man. Although I anxiously anticipate the upcoming France jokes associated with MacWorld in Paris.
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curiousuburb
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2005-07-04, 11:54

Impactor nosecam movie...


We're Going In

Some impressive resolution before the camera lens got blasted by dust.

Last edited by curiousuburb : 2005-07-04 at 11:56.
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709
¡Damned!
 
Join Date: May 2004
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2005-07-04, 14:04

Damn. I have a feeling my 37 metre crater prediction might be a tad small. Here's hoping my SO's 167 metre prediction pans out. I want that copper.

So it goes.
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