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2006 Annual Science Report

University of Hawaii, Manoa Reporting  |  JUL 2005 – JUN 2006

The Deep Impact Mission and Astrobiology

Project Summary

The Deep Impact mission is the first planetary mission to carry out direct experimentation on a cometary body by delivering a 364-kg impactor to comet 9P/Tempel 1 at 10.2 km/s on UT July 4, 2005.

4 Institutions
3 Teams
0 Publications
0 Field Sites
Field Sites

Project Progress

The Deep Impact mission is the first planetary mission to carry out direct experimentation on a cometary body by delivering a 364-kg impactor to comet 9P/Tempel 1 at 10.2 km/s on UT July 4, 2005. UHNAI team members were closely involved in the world-wide effort of ground- and Earth-orbital observations to characterize the target nucleus pre-impact and to observe throughout the period of Encounter. K. Meech and A. Delsanti coordinated the real-time world observing encounter effort through multiple video conferencing (with up to 32 sites simultaneously), and near real-time accessibility of observations from all sources via the web, UH NAI team members played a leading science role at encounter by leading several observing efforts and collaborating on several others:

  • Dust evolution after impact (utilizing the Cerro Tololo interamerican observatory 4m, 1.5m, 0.9m and Schmidt telescopes, along with the CFHT 3.6m telescope on Mauna Kea): goal to assess whether the dust characteristics change post-impact.
  • Gaseous isotope ratios using high resolution spectroscopy on Keck to examine fractionation processes in comet formation.
  • Gas and dust volatile composition — using the Spitzer space infrared telescope to watch the evolution of organic species post impact.
  • Light curve evolution — observations using the Hubble Space Telescope and the Lowell Observatory 72-inch telescope showed a complex light curve. We are analyzing this in the context of impact cratering dynamics.

The impact event was coupled with a major UH NAI outreach event in which a collaboration of teachers and students from Hawaii, Iceland and the UK worked together on Maui, lead by astronomer A. Fitzsimmons, to use the 2-m Faulkes Telescope to obtain broadband science images of the comet at encounter during a public event.

Observations of the comet continued into the fall until the comet entered solar conjunction, to monitor the effects of the impact. The Deep Impact event, coupled with other past and current comet observations made both within and outside of the NAI has opened up new paradigms of understanding about the early solar system. Analysis of the massive data sets is ongoing, and work for this year focused on 3 areas, investigating the size distribution of the dust released at impact, an analysis of the scattering properties of the nucleus surface (which showed that the dark material was highly porous) and a comparison of data sets obtained throughout the world in an interdisciplinary examination of the implication for early solar system formation processes and physical processes on the comet.

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