Por accidente, logran el mayor acercamiento a un cometa
Una nave espacial sobrevivió al encuentro más cercano de la historia de un artefacto de este tipo con un cometa, separados sólo por 700 kilómetros.
El control de misión en el Laboratorio de Propulsion de la NASA en Pasadena, California, transmitió en vivo en el Canal de Medios de la Televisión de la NASA
Especialistas esperan que la nave de la agencia EPOXI pueda recopilar datos del cometa Hartley 2, que viajaba a una velocidad de 27,000 millas por hora, con dos cámaras y un instrumento de infrarrojos.
Los científicos siguen trabajando para determinar si hubo algún daño a la nave con el paso del cometa. Tienen la esperanza de aprender más acerca de estos cuerpos celestes a partir de las mágenes más detalladas y cercanas.
"Las primeras imágenes pueden no ser las mejores, pero para los científicos es diferente y ellos podrán ayudarnos a comprender la naturaleza de los cometas", dijo Mike A'Hearn, investigador de EPOXI, citado en un comunicado de la NASA.
Se espera que las imágenes retraten el núcleo del cometa como poco más que un punto de luz con una nube gaseosa rodeándolo.
"Fue simplemente increíble", dijo Ed Weiler, administrador asociado de la dirección de misiones de ciencia para la NASA.
A spacecraft survived the closest encounter ever with a comet on Thursday, tracking it just 435 miles from the comet's nucleus.
Mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, broadcast live coverage of the event on NASA Television's Media Channel. Controllers broke into applause after hearing of the success.
The agency's EPOXI Deep Impact spacecraft was expected to use two imagers and an infrared instrument to acquire data about a tiny comet named Hartley 2 as it traveled at speeds of more than 27,000 miles per hour.
Scientists are still working to determine whether there was any damage to the spacecraft as the peanut-shaped comet passed by.
They hope to learn to more about comets from five images detailing the close approach.
"Those early images may not be the 'money shot,' but we on the science team will prize them just as well, as they will help us further understand the nature of comets," said EPOXI principal investigator Mike A'Hearn of the University of Maryland, College Park, in a NASA statement. "We certainly have our hands full. The images are full of great cometary data, and that's what we hoped for."
The images are expected to depict the comet nucleus as little more than a point of light with a fuzzy coma, a gaseous cloud, surrounding it.
"It was just incredible," Ed Weiler, associate administrator of the Science Missions Directorate for NASA, said of the encounter.
Five years after NASA launched an 800-pound projectile into a comet in an effort to study its contents, the same spacecraft that launched the missile tracked Hartley 2 on Thursday.
It is the first spacecraft to have visited two comets.
NASA officials expressed hope that such missions will inspire young people to get into the field of space exploration.
