{"id":42358,"date":"2005-07-03T19:21:48","date_gmt":"2005-07-03T11:21:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/deep-impact-just-hours-away\/"},"modified":"2005-07-03T19:21:48","modified_gmt":"2005-07-03T11:21:48","slug":"deep-impact-just-hours-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/deep-impact-just-hours-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Impact just hours away"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists will tomorrow attempt to blast a hole in a distant comet using a 39-inch wide projectile fired from a space craft. <\/p>\n

If it succeeds, the Deep Impact mission will be a technological triumph for mission controllers at NASA.\n<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

The aim is to smash out a chunk of the icy surface of comet Tempel 1, 133 million miles from Earth, to see what lies beneath. <\/font> <\/p>\n

By analysing the comet\u2019s interior and the cloud of dust and ice thrown out by the explosion, scientists hope to answer fundamental questions about the formation of the Solar System. <\/font><\/p>\n

But hitting a target less than 3.7 miles wide from a distance of 537,000 miles is no easy feat. <\/font><\/p>\n

Controllers will steer both space craft and impactor to the comet from their mission base at Nasa\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. <\/font><\/p>\n

Space Technology<\/path>NASA mission patches<\/path>Company News<\/path>\n

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n

At precisely the right time, they will release the 820-pound copper and aluminium projectile into the path of the comet, which is hurtling through space at 23,000mph. <\/font><\/p>\n

The projectile and Tempel 1 will come together in spectacular fashion at about 6.52am on Monday, London time.<\/font> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientists will tomorrow attempt to blast a hole in a distant comet using a 39-inch wide projectile fired from a space craft. If it succeeds, the Deep Impact mission will be a technological triumph for mission controllers at NASA. The aim is to smash out a chunk of the icy surface of comet Tempel 1, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42358"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}