NASA spacecraft has an appointment with comet Hartley 2 this fall. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Over the weekend, NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft will fly past Earth for the fifth and last time. Swinging by Earth on June 27th, the probe’s trajectory then places it on target for a close encounter with comet Hartley 2 later this year.
The NASA Deep Impact mission made history when it smashed a probe into comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005. Following that task, the spacecraft’s on-going mission has been tagged EPOXI – a name derived from this mission’s two tasked science investigations — the Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI) and the Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization (EPOCh).
Next on the agenda for Deep Impact is the November 4, 2010 extended flyby of comet Hartley 2. The spacecraft will use its three instruments to inspect the object (two telescopes with digital color cameras and an infrared spectrometer).
“We are using Sunday’s flyby to also change the shape of the [spacecraft’s] orbit to get us to the comet,” said University of Maryland astronomer Michael A’Hearn. He’s the principal investigator for both the EPOXI mission and its predecessor mission, Deep Impact.
The University of Maryland is the Principal Investigator institution. The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages EPOXI for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.
The venerable spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation in Boulder, Colorado.
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By LD/CSE