NASA’s EPOXI mission has flown by comet Hartley 2 today, producing staggering images of the object.
“This is a day that scientists live for,” said JPL scientist, Don Yeomans, an asteroid and comet expert. More than one jet was caught shooting out from the comet, he noted.
“It does look rather like a peanut,” Yeomans noted.
The spacecraft flew within 700 kilometers (435 miles) of the comet’s nucleus.
The flyby marked the fifth time in history that a spacecraft has been close enough to image the heart of the comet, more commonly known as the nucleus.
Shortly after the flyby, NASA space science chief, Edward Weiler, said:
“This is a moment of exploration…we’re seeing something that nobody has seen before.” Now the science begins, he added, to discern more about the comet, how it reacts as it cruises through space.
“This is real…this is not a simulation,” Weiler said. More images — including high-resolution photos — are to be released through the day.
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 – built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation of Boulder, Colorado — will continue to be referred to as “Deep Impact.” JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the EPOXI mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C
By Leonard David