NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

  1. Content with the tag: “comet

  2. The Heart of Comet Hartley 2


    Jets spew out ice and carbon dioxide from one end of comet Hartley-2 in this EPOXI image, while water vapor gets released from the middle region. The differences suggest that the comet's core is made of at least two different ices. Ground-based measurements suggest the presence of a third ice. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD

    At the heart of every comet lies a remnant of the dawn of the solar system. Or is that remnants? Astronomers don’t know, but the answer would give them a clearer picture of exactly how comets were born eons ago at the birth of the Solar System. Did thin tendrils of dust and ice get drawn slowly inward and pack themselves into a single, uniform mass? Or did a hodge-podge of mini-comets come together to form the core for a comet of substance?

    For Hartley-2, the answer so far is neither. “We haven’t seen a comet like this before,”...

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    Source: [NASA Press Release]

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  3. Hot Rocks from Comet Wild 2


    Scientists are finding surprises from analyzing tiny particles of comet dust collected by the Stardust spacecraft and returned to Earth 8 weeks ago. They had expected mostly “primitive” particles that had condensed under cool conditions in the solar nebula and been preserved in the deep freeze of space. However, some of the comet dust is made of minerals that can only be formed at high temperatures — either close to the Sun or perhaps in other planetary systems that existed before the solar system formed. NAI scientist Don Browlee reports that “In the coldest part of the solar system,...

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    Source: [Link]

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