New Millennium programme spacecraft Deep Space 1 (DS 1) completed its mission to take close-up images of the comet Borelly during its fly-by on 22 September.
DS 1 passed within 2,200km (1,366 miles) of the comet's nucleus at a speed of 60,000 km/h (376,270mph), taking black and white images which were transmitted 220,00km to Earth. Images of the comet's nucleus revealthe 4km x 8km body ejecting columns of dust and frozen dust, and an ice core coated with a black material thought to be a mix of organic molecules. DS 1 also returned data on the gases and infrared waves around the nucleus.
The images were the second to be taken of a comet close-up, following the European Space Agency's Giotto mission in March 1986 during a rendezvous with Halley's Comet.
Since its launch in 1998, DS 1 has demonstrated 12 new technologies, including an ion propulsion system. DS 1 also made a fly-by of the asteroid Braille. A navigational camera failure almost aborted the Borelly mission, however, until engineers reprogrammed the science camera to take over the function.
Meanwhile, NASA says that the first detailed global mapping of an asteroid - the 20km-long 433 Eros, by the NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft - has suggested that most of the larger rocks (some 6,760 larger than 15m across) strewn across the 1,125 km2 (435 miles2) of the body were ejected from a single 7.6km wide crater in a meteorite collision.
The New Horizons team formed by Southwest Research Institute and the Johns Hopkins Laboratory has completed a NASA-funded Phase A Pluto-Kuiper Belt (PKB) mission study. Two organisations were each awarded the $450,000 Phase A contracts, with the other team led by the University of Colorado.New Horizons says that the PKB mission can be launched in December 2004, equipped with sensitive, miniaturised cameras and radio science, ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers and space plasma experiments to characterise the global geology and geomorphology of Pluto and its moon, Charon, to map their surface compositions and characterise Pluto's atmosphere.
The mission will fly to Pluto using a Jupiter gravity-assist manoeuvre, to reduce travel time. A 2004 launch will enable the craft to reach Pluto in 2014, while a later January 2006 launch would delay its arrival until 2018.
Source: Flight International
