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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oral Roberts who wrote (26066)	1/12/2005 11:00:31 AM
From: Rainy_Day_Woman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

aliens on the same planet did you see this? NASA to send spacecraft on a crash course The falling stars you make a wish upon next July may just be the debris from a cosmic collision. That's because NASA is planning to create a cosmic fireworks display on July 4, otherwise known as U.S. Independence Day, when it sends a probe moving at almost 37,000 kilometres per hour slamming into a passing comet. The copper-fortified craft dubbed Deep Impact is due to take off Wednesday at exactly 1:47 p.m. ET. It will then travel for six months to make the 431-million-kilometre journey to Comet Tempel 1. "They travel together," he said. "And the impacter portion is deployed just 24-48 hours before the impact. It slams into comet Temple 1 and then the observer craft monitors what happens." When impact occurs, the comet, which poses no threat to the Earth now or in the foreseeable future, will be about 133 million kilometres from Earth. NASA says the crash will offer an unprecedented look beneath the surface of comet Tempel 1, which has remained relatively unchanged from the time of the solar system's formation. The flying debris will likely be visible to astronomers and space buffs on Earth, NASA said. And the crash -- although a minor one in relative terms -- will make a crater the size of a stadium on the six-kilometre wide comet, NASA said. "In the world of science, this is the astronomical equivalent of a 767 airliner running into a mosquito," said Don Yeomans, a Deep Impact mission scientist, about the impact of the probe on the comet. In addition to learning something about the composition of the comet, scientists hope the experiment will give them some insight on how to move a comet -- should one ever take a collision course with Earth.