Deep Imact launches probe

[Guest Glenn]

Source: AFP

 

July 04, 2005

 

A US spacecraft successfully fired a projectile that will collide with a comet as part of a unique experiment to study its makeup, US space officials said.

 

The projectile, the size of an oil drum, was fired at 06:07 GMT by US spacecraft Deep Impact that had undertaken a 173-day, 431-million-kilometre journey to get closer to the comet as large as half Manhattan Island.

 

Shortly after the separation, a camera-equipped probe peeled off from the projectile and set on a separate path that will get it as close as 500km to Tempel 1 shortly after the copper-laden impactor slams into it.

 

"Everything appears to have gone as planned," Alan Buis, a spokesman for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told AFP.

 

The collision, scheduled for about 06:00 GMT Monday, is expected to gouge a large crater on the surface of the comet, sending up a cloud of ice, dust and debris that researchers hope will produce a real scientific bonanza.

 

That is when the fly-by probe will swing into action. It will have approximately 13 minutes to take infrared and other images of the collision and the resulting cloud before it is swallowed by a potential blizzard of particles from the nucleus of the comet.

 

Images will also be taken and beamed back to the mother spaceship by the impactor in the final minutes of its life, allowing a glimpse into the cloud of gases and dust enveloping Tempel 1.

 

 

[Guest atlantis]

The last thing NASA expected was a lawsuit from Russia.

 

But Russian astrologist Marina Bai gave it a try, and, according to her lawyer Alexander Molokhov, it looks like she may just pull it off. In a lawsuit she filed last month with the Presnensky district court in Moscow, Bai is demanding that NASA call off its $311 million operation, with the spacecraft already in its cruise phase. She also wants 8.7 billion rubles (the ruble equivalent of the entire cost of the mission) in compensation for moral damages.

 

?The actions of NASA infringe upon my system of spiritual and life values, in particular on the values of every element of creation, upon the unacceptability of barbarically interfering with the natural life of the universe, and the violation of the natural balance of the Universe,? Bai said in her claim.

 

 

[Guest Glenn]

What a crock of #$%* :shock: :roll:

 

 

[Guest Ultralights]

F**kin lawers! and religious fruitcakes! oh and is there a link to the original story?

 

 

[Guest atlantis]

F**kin lawers! and religious fruitcakes! oh and is there a link to the original story?

looks like there's heaps,

 

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=astrologist+Marina+Bai+&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

 

I just cut and pasted from one of them.