Comet mission appears to have broken apart. (Lost in Space).Just 2 weeks ago, the CONTOUR probe, launched July 3, was beginning its journey to two comets, one of which had broken into pieces. It now appears that the $159 million spacecraft has itself broken apart. "I feel like I lost a relative," says planetary scientist Lucy-Ann A. McFadden of the University of Maryland University of Maryland can refer to:
Engineers haven't heard from CONTOUR, or Comet Nucleus The solid, central part of a comet is known as the comet nucleus. The nucleus is a minor planet composed of rock, dust, and frozen gases. When heated by the sun, the gases sublimate or are ignited, and produce an atmosphere surrounding the nucleus known as the coma. Tour, since Aug. 15, when they commanded the craft to fire its solid-propellant rocket. The maneuver was intended to place CONTOUR on a path toward its first target, Comet Encke Comet Encke (officially designated 2P/Encke) is a periodic comet, named after Johann Franz Encke, who through laborious study of its orbit and many calculations was able to link multiple observations in 1786 (2P/1786 B1), 1795 (2P/1795 V1), 1805 (2P/1805 U1) and 1818 (SN: 8/3/02, p. 77). The most compelling evidence that something terrible happened came from a set of grainy grain·y adj. grain·i·er, grain·i·est 1. Made of or resembling grain; granular. 2. Resembling the grain of wood. 3. Having a granular appearance due to the clumping of particles in the emulsion. images. Hours after CONTOUR fell silent, the Spacewatch Telescope near Tucson found two objects at CONTOUR's predicted position and moving at its predicted speed, strongly suggesting the craft had broken up. Although mission director Robert Farquhar of Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University, mainly at Baltimore, Md. Johns Hopkins in 1867 had a group of his associates incorporated as the trustees of a university and a hospital, endowing each with $3.5 million. Daniel C. Applied Physics Laboratory The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), located in Laurel, Maryland, is a not-for-profit, university-affiliated research center employing 4,000 people. in Laurel, Md., is hoping that CONTOUR remains mostly intact and capable of functioning, "it's not very encouraging," he told reporters last week. As of press time, Farquhar and his colleagues hadn't heard from the craft. If no signal comes by Aug. 25, he says, the best bet is a final search in December, when the probe's antennas would be more aligned with Earth. Astronomers have studied the nuclei of only two comets close up, Halley and Borrelly (SN: 9/29/01, p. 196). If CONTOUR has indeed stopped functioning, researchers will have lost the opportunity for close-up studies of two additional comets, Encke and Schwassmann-Wachmann 3. McFadden and her colleagues have another reason to lament the loss of CONTOUR. Data on Encke would have served as a guide for their own comet mission, Deep Impact. That probe, set for launch in 2004, will fire a projectile projectile something thrown forward. projectile syringe see blow dart. projectile vomiting forceful vomiting, usually without preceding retching, in which the vomitus is thrown well forward. into Comet Tempel 1 and analyze the resulting debris. |
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