The Ball AeroSpace and Technology are prepping a craft to to be shot into a comet. They have called the craft, Deep Impact, probably in honour of the rather tedious film with the same name starring the immensely funny and attractive Mrs. Duchovny, Tea Leoni.
Objective of the mission is to study the pristine interior of a comet by excavating a huge crater in Comet Tempel 1.Once set free from the Flyby spacecraft, the Impactor may form a football stadium-sized crater in the comet that could be as deep as 14-stories.
This cosmic rear-ender comes on America’s Independence Day: July 4, 2005. The Impactor spacecraft will be vaporized upon impact with the comet. Both comet and spacecraft will be traveling at closing speeds in excess of 23,000 miles per hour upon
impact.Deep Impact’s telescopes, cameras and spectrometer aboard the Flyby spacecraft will witness the impact and return data on the pristine material in the crater and the material ejected by the impact. The High Resolution Imager aboard the Flyby spacecraft will be one of the largest interplanetary telescopes ever flown in order to record the details of the collision. Meanwhile, the Impactor spacecraft will also provide close-encounter photos of the comet just prior to impact, giving scientists the most complete view of a comet to date.
Getting a first view of pristine material inside a comet should prove invaluable to the scientific community.
Max Faget, Designer of The Mercury Capsule Passes Away
Right on the heels of the passing of Gordon Cooper, we get this news. I guess you don't live forever.
Without Max Faget’s innovative designs and thoughtful approach to problem
solving, America’s space program would have had trouble getting off the ground," said NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe. "He also was an aeronautics pioneer. In fact, it was his work on supersonic flight research that eventually led to his interest in space flight. The thoughts and prayers of the entire agency are with his family."Faget's career with NASA dates back to 1946, when he joined the staff of Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., as a research scientist. He worked in the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division and later was named head of the Performance Aerodynamics Branch. He conceived and proposed the development of the one-man spacecraft used in Project Mercury.
Faget was selected as one of the original 35 engineers as a nucleus of the Space Task Group to carry out the Mercury project. The group also devoted a lot of time to follow-on programs and Faget led the initial design and analysis teams that studied the feasibility of a flight to the Moon. As a result of his work and other NASA research, President John F. Kennedy was able to commit the U.S. to a lunar landing by the end of the 1960s.
"Max was a genuine icon," said NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Operations William Readdy, "a down-to-earth Cajun with a very nuts-and-bolts approach to engineering. He contributed immeasurably to America's successes in human space flight. His genius allowed us to compete and win the space race to the Moon."
"Max Faget was truly a legend of the manned space flight program," said Christopher C. Kraft, former Johnson Space Center director. "He was a true icon of the space program. There is no one in space flight history in this or any other country who has had a larger impact on man's quest in space exploration. He was a colleague and a friend I regarded with the highest esteem. History will remember him as one of the really great scientists of the 20th Century."
To think I'd never even heard of him because I was so interested in the Astronauts. :)
Faget was also responsible (and therefore culpable) for the feasibility study for the Space Shuttle programme. Of course he could have said, "Why do you want to do this at all?", but like a good civil servant, he reported back the answers they wanted to hear. We all value our paychecks.
He was 83.
Disturbance In The Force
Sometimes the Soap Opera that is the New York Yankees gets a little strange. We find the report today that Mariano Rivera's relatives electrocuted themselves cleaning his pool in Panama. As a consequence, Mo's status and availability for the Yankees has been cast in to doubt.
Victor Dario Avila, a cousin of Rivera's wife, Clara, and his 14-year-old son
were killed Saturday, Rivera's cousin, Irma Rivera, told The Associated Press.
The teenager, also named Victor Dario Avila, apparently touched an electrical wire while cleaning the pool in Puerto Caimito, 40 miles east of Panama City. His father died trying to save him, Irma Rivera said.
Not good. Not good at all.
- Art Neuro
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