Official News page 7

REAL LIFE NEWS: COMET CLOSE ENCOUNTER

by Hazed

The Stardust spacecraft, sent by NASA to check out some comets, has had a close encounter with Tempel 1. It passed within 111 miles of the comet, during which time it took a few substantial hits from cometary debris.

It's sent back some impressive photos of the comet, and collected data on the body's tail. Engineering telemetry reveals it "flew through waves of disintegrating cometary particles including a dozen impacts that penetrated more than one layer of its protective shielding."

One of the Stardust team compared it to "something similar to a B-17 bomber flying through flak in Word War II. Instead of having a little stream of uniform particles coming out, they apparently came out in chunks and crumbled."

Among the fascinating images that scientists are studying is a picture showing the crater caused by the Deep Impact spacecraft back in July 2005.

Read more about the close encounter here. There's also some pictures of the comet including a before-and-after shot of the impact site.

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