- The first image of comet Tempel 1 taken by NASA’s Stardust spacecraft is a composite made from observations on Jan. 18 and 19, 2011. The panel on the right highlights the location of comet Tempel 1 in the frame. On Valentine’s Day (Feb. 14 in U.S. time zones), Stardust will fly within about 200 kilometers (124 miles) of the comet’s nucleus. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
All is in readiness at the Stardust-NExT mission draws closer to its target: comet Tempel 1.
Sweet success is expected on February 14 – Valentine’s Day — as the space probe makes a close flyby of the celestial wanderer. The two are now hurtling toward each other at about 590,000 miles a day.
Launched in 1999, Stardust’s earlier adventure involved a rendezvous with comet Wild 2.
Stardust was the first mission to return extraterrestrial material from beyond the Moon. Its primary goal was to collect samples from comet Wild 2. Stardust flew nearly 3 billion miles before returning a sample capsule to Earth. The 125-pound sample container landed by parachute in the Utah Test and Training Range in early January of 2006.
Next target
Stardust caught its first glimpse of comet Tempel 1 on January 26.
Joe Veverka, Cornell university professor of astronomy, is principal investigator for Stardust-NExT, the NASA mission orchestrating the rendezvous.
The Valentine’s Day flyby could yield a wealth of new information about Tempel 1’s structure and composition, Veverka said, and how its features change with every passage around the Sun.
“We know that comets lose material,” he said in a recent press conference. “But the question is, how does the surface change, and where does the surface change?”
Tempel 1 was the target of a previous mission – NASA’s Deep Impact – with that spacecraft ejecting an impactor that struck the comet’s surface. The Deep Impact spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado.
Comparing the Deep Impact 2005 images with new ones from Stardust-NExT — could provide the answer about surface changes on the comet that’s taken one rotation around the Sun between mission visits.
Vital information
One exciting prospect is that Stardust could also catch a glimpse of the crater that formed when the probe from Deep Impact crashed into Tempel 1’s surface six years ago.
“That impact threw up so much ejecta that Deep Impact never saw the crater,” Veverka said. “So it could never see how big the crater is and what [it] tells us about the mechanical properties of the surface.”
This type of information is vital for any future mission that involves landing a spacecraft on the surface of a comet, Veverka added.
Stardust-NExT is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems built the spacecraft and manages day-to-day mission operations.
By LD/CSE