A Valentine’s Day target has been spotted by NASA’s Stardust spacecraft.
Images of comet Tempel 1 have been relayed by the en route probe, over 16 million miles away from the celestial object.
The Stardust NExT mission is slated to carry out close-up investigations of Tempel 1 on February 14.
Tempel 1 has been visited previously – the object of attention by another NASA mission – Deep Impact in July 2005. Scientists are hopeful that the upcoming encounter will relay up-close looks of the comet and, perhaps, images of the crater created by Deep Impact’s impactor probe that struck the huge ball of ice and rock.
In January 2007, NASA re-christened the mission Stardust-NExT — New Exploration of Tempel 1 — and the Stardust team began a four-and-a-half year journey for the spacecraft to that specific comet.
The spacecraft was built and is under the control of Colorado-based Lockheed Martin’s Space Systems. Engineers at the aerospace company are monitoring the overall health and readiness of Stardust to perform the upcoming flyby.
Along with the high-resolution images of comet Tempel 1’s surface, Stardust-NExT will also take measurements to help glean data on how Jupiter-family comets evolve and how they formed 4.6 billion years ago.
To keep your own eye on next month’s flyby of NASA’s Stardust-NExT, go to:
http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov
By LD/CSE