Jan 29, 2011 23:01 GMT  ·  By
These are the latest images that the Stardust-NExT mission collected of comet 9P/Tempel
   These are the latest images that the Stardust-NExT mission collected of comet 9P/Tempel

A NASA spacecraft heading for a Valentine's Day flyby of a famous comet has eyes on its target, officials at the American space agency announced recently. Everything appears to be set for the upcoming studies, which are bound to yield more data about comets in general.

The Stardust-NExT mission uses a space probe that has imaged other comets before, but which is so resilient that it accepts re-purposing and mission reassignment following each successful flyby.

Launched in 1999, the Stardust spacecraft was originally a sample-return mission bound for comet Wild 2. As it was heading towards its target, it also carried out a flyby of comet Annefrank.

After successfully returning its sample chamber to Earth, mission managers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, decided to try and gain even more data about comets using the specialized spacecraft.

The comet 9P/Tempel 1 was selected as a target because it was visited by the Deep Impact space probe in 2005. At the time, that spacecraft released an impactor that slammed into the space body.

However, the exact extent of the effects this test caused were not made clear, due to the massive plume of ice and dust particles that formed clouds around the impact site. JPL scientists hope that Stardust will be able to observe the Deep Impact site.

“We were there in 2005 with the Deep Impact spacecraft, and this is a golden opportunity. It’s the first time we’ve ever been able to revisit a comet on a second pass near the Sun,” says Stardust-NExT project manager Tim Larson, quoted by Universe Today.

He explains that the JPL group knows since 2005 that the surface of Tempel 1 is very interesting in terms of features. They hope that the new flyby will help them make more sense of the readings and images collected by Deep Impact.

“We have found smooth areas that look like material flows, there are rough, pitted areas, there are craters on the surface, which we don’t know if they’re impact craters or if they’re caused by material coming out from the inside of the comet,” Larson explains.

“So this is a very interesting comet in terms of variety of terrain,” he goes on to say. The new images of the comet were taken on January 18 and 19 from a distance of 26.3 million kilometers and 25.4 million kilometers, respectively.

They show the space object as a spec of dust in the distance, but Stardust is traveling to fast that it only needs two weeks to catch up with its target.

“We should be able to get around three dozen images that are at better than 80 meters per pixel resolution and our closest approach images should be down below 20 meters per pixel resolution,” Larson reveals.

“That will be good enough to resolve a lot of the key features on the surface of the comet and start that process of comparison,” he adds. At the point of closest approach, Stardust-NExT will pass 200 kilometers (125 miles) above the comet's surface.