14 DAY TRIAL // Scientists are not only movie fans, but they also seem to be a little "voyeuristic". They're not only going to hit a comet with their probe, but they also want to see everything up close. And they're using their most hi-tech equipment to do so.
Now, leaving the joke aside, seeing that the Deep Impact mission is a very important one, the fact that there will also be an alternative to the probe's flow of images is quite a bonus for scientific research. As we told you in a previous article, the Deep Impact probe is scheduled to hit the Tempel 1 comet on the July 4, with the purpose of revealing some of the mysteries contained since the comet was created billions of years ago. The main idea is that the comets are believed to contain raw materials from the birth of our solar system, and this mission could tell us a lot about the birth of Earth itself.
The alternative we mentioned earlier is represented by the space telescopes orbiting Earth. NASA's Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes are ready to observe the phenomenon, as are most of the big telescopes on Earth. "We will be here and we'll be working," said Cheryl Gundy, a spokeswoman for the Space Telescope Science Institute.
However, the most relevant flow of data will come from the probe's own imagery equipment. Deep Impact is fitted with a High Resolution Instrument, which is designed to deliver light simultaneously to a multispectral camera and to an infrared spectrometer. The fly-by spacecraft also carries a Medium Resolution Instrument, which is a smaller telescope, and the impactor also has a camera.
But, beside all these preparations, "The important point everyone has to realize is the uncertainty is so large we don't know what to expect," said Michael A'Hearn, professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland, at a preview briefing Thursday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
"It is possible that the change will be so small you can't see it with anything less than a four-meter telescope. It could be much more than that, it could be that you could see the change with binoculars," added A'Hearn. "You just have to be aware of the uncertainty".