Re: Observe the Deep Impact Spacecraft Close In On Comet Tempel 1

From: newsgroups (jss_at_tricomachine.com)
Date: 02/04/05 

Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2005 14:43:25 GMT

What happens if we tick this thing off and it decides
to come after us ?

<baalke@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:1107478347.091766.86780@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> http://neo/orbits/deepimpact.html
>
> Observe the Deep Impact Spacecraft Close In On Comet Tempel 1
> Don Yeomans and Ron Baalke
> NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office
> February 3, 2005
>
> An interactive 3D orbital plotter has been developed to
> show the trajectories of the Deep Impact spacecraft as it
> approaches and runs closely past comet Tempel 1. The red
> orbital path of the Deep Impact spacecraft shows for dates
> beyond the launch on January 12, 2005 with the pink
> portion of the trajectory being above the Earth's orbital
> plane and the dark red portion being below this plane.
> To minimize the energy (i.e., fuel) needed to launch the
> spacecraft, the comet encounter takes place very near the
> point where the comet passes through the plane of the
> Earth's orbit (ecliptic plane); by launching from Earth,
> the spacecraft is already in the ecliptic plane so that
> no fuel need be used to push the spacecraft out of this plane.
>
> By running the orbital plotter forward in time, you will
> note that the comet overtakes the spacecraft on July 4, 2005
> with a relative velocity of 10.2 kilometers per second
> (23,000 mph) and it is at this time that the impactor
> spacecraft will collide with the comet. After observing
> the impact itself, the flyby spacecraft will continue in
> its obit about the sun, pass within 0.033 AU (about
> 4.9 million km or 3 million miles) of Mars on January 6, 2007,
> and return to the Earth's neighborhood in late January 2008 -
> some 3 years and two full orbits about the sun after launch.
> If the spacecraft is healthy and if NASA is able to grant
> the necessary permission and resources, the spacecraft
> could then be re-targeted for another cometary flyby by
> using the Earth encounter to re-shape the spacecraft's
> trajectory.
>

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