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NASA's recycled Stardust satellite flew past comet Tempel 1 late terminal period (Feb. 14), snapping photos of the place where a assorted enquiry crashed into the icy opencast nearly sextet eld ago.

Before Stardust encountered Tempel 1, the comet was visited once before, in July 2005, when NASA's Deep Impact satellite plunged a diminutive enquiry into the icy opencast to watch the comet's composition.

The newborn images from yesterday's Stardust flyby refer the Deep Impact break site, giving scientists the unequalled knowledge to refer changes on the opencast of Tempel 1 in the eld between the digit missions.

Crater revealed

"We do impact a comparability of the Deep Impact Atlantic in 2005 and 2011, and it does show an effect crater," Joe Veverka, Stardust-NExT principal policeman at philanthropist University in Ithaca, N.Y., said in a programme briefing today (Feb. 15). "Erosion on the scale of 20 to 30 meters of touchable has occurred in the fivesome or sextet eld since we took the prototypal picture. We are sight a change, but we impact to pay instance quantifying the changes and understanding what they mean."

The crevice is most 150 meters (492 feet) across, and from the images, the scientists crapper wager where ejecta from the effect came up and lapse backwards to the surface.

"One of the bottom-line messages is that the opencast of the comet where we impact is very weak — it's fragile," said Pete Schultz, Stardust-NExT co-investigator at emancipationist University in Providence, R.I.

Stardust's appointment with comet Tempel 1 brought the enquiry to within 110 miles (178 kilometers) of the icy body at its closest approach, which occurred at 11:40 p.m. EST yesterday (0440 instance today). As the Stardust satellite trekked past, it snapped 72 high-resolution photos of the icy comet.

Comet Tempel 1 is 3.7 miles (6 km) wide, and makes digit orbit around the sun every 5 1/2 years. Yesterday's flyby, conception of the Stardust-NExT mission, module allow scientists to examine how such the comet has denaturized since the Deep Impact encounter.

"This is exciting for us, it's the prototypal instance we've ever had the opportunity to meet a comet twice," said Tim Larson, Stardust-NExT send manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Minor glitch

The prototypal images free from the flyby showed comet Tempel 1 from a indifference of most 1,600 miles (2,575 km). These pictures were the prototypal ones condemned by the satellite as it approached the comet. Mission scientists had hoped that the initial ordered of photos beamed backwards to Earth would be fivesome images from Stardust's closest approach, but a secondary flaw caused the enquiry to send the images in chronological order instead.

"It did not jeopardize accumulation onboard," Larson said. "Everything was safely stored in memory and was primed to be dispatched down. We meet had to move a little longer."

Researchers are also hoping to use Stardust-NExT to transpose the opencast of Tempel 1. The satellite took pictures of many of the same areas previously seen by the Deep Impact probe, but Stardust was also able to ikon newborn terrain, and module move to do so as it travels absent from the comet.

As Stardust flew by the comet, the satellite also encountered the comet's veil of pedal and dust. Stardust is armored with sensors that crapper notice when the satellite is impact by detritus particles from Tempel 1.

"Stardust went through this darken of pedal and detritus through the comet and had a dozen impacts on the front directive bounds of the spacecraft," said Don Brownlee, Stardust-NExT co-investigator from the University of Washington in Seattle.

Scientists institute that the touchable spewed from comets is not done so in a homogenous way, but instead comes in intermittent bursts and puffs. Analysis of this accumulation could support scientists see more most how comets form, and how these primordial objects send pedal and detritus into space.

1,000 proportionality flourishing

Overall, the Stardust assignment managers proclaimed the flyby an resistless success.

"We're staggeringly happy," Veverka said. "If you ask me, was this assignment 100 proportionality flourishing in cost of science? No, it was 1,000 proportionality successful."

The comet-chasing Stardust satellite has spent 12 eld in expanse and has cosmopolitan more than 3.5 billion miles (5.7 billion km) during that time. In 2004, the enquiry visited comet Wild 2 and collected samples in a diminutive container that was after returned to Earth.

After Stardust's appointment with comet Wild 2, NASA repurposed the satellite to meet Tempel 1, and renamed the assignment Stardust-NExT, for New Exploration of Tempel.

Yesterday's encounter, however, module likely be the test assignment for Stardust, since the satellite utilised up most of its remaining render to catch up to comet Tempel 1, researchers said.

You crapper follow SPACE.com Staff Writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow.

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