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PASADENA, Calif. – Love is in the air on Earth — and in expanse too.

Some 210 meg miles away, a comet-hunting satellite is ready to intend up nearby and individualized with its cosmic match on Valentine's Day.

Barreling along at 24,000 mph, NASA's Stardust foxiness module swoop within 125 miles of comet Tempel 1 — nearby enough to verify high-resolution images of the surface. If every goes as planned, it module be the prototypal instance that digit different satellite hit visited Tempel 1, a potato-shaped comet half the size of Manhattan.

Scientists organisation to meet up every night poring through the images to study how the comet's opencast has changed.

Stardust module be operating autonomously during the rendezvous. The closest approach is due to become at 8:40 p.m. PST.

Since Stardust's sensitiveness module be spinous absent from Earth during the encounter, it module verify whatever instance for it to download images and data after re-establishing contact.

Not to be outdone by Stardust, digit scientists who met patch employed on the assignment got geared individual hours before the Valentine flyby. Their contact was announced by NASA on Twitter.

"Taking the Valentine's day comet connexion to the incoming level, 2 of the assignment scientists just got engaged. Cheers every around," the tweet read.

Scientists are fascinated in studying comets because they could wage clues to how the solarise and planets formed. Comets are thought to include frozen primordial ingredients that date backwards to the birth of the solar system whatever 4.5 1000000000 eld ago.

Tempel 1's fuck chronicle is like a celestial clean opera.

In 2005, it had a less-than-romantic connexion with added NASA foxiness dubbed Deep Impact. Instead of air by Tempel 1, Deep Impact aimed a conductor missile that crashed into the opencast and excavated a crater. So such detritus and debris streamed discover that Deep Impact was unable to see the result of its devastating act.

NASA hopes to glimpse the crevice when Stardust passes nearby the Deep Impact site.

Since actuation in 1999, Stardust has journeyed 3.5 1000000000 miles. Its prototypal fuck was not Tempel 1. In 2004, Stardust zipped past comet Wild 2, scooping up atomlike interstellar detritus and comet grains in a capsule that was after jettisoned to Earth. The $300 meg assignment gave scientists their prototypal assemblage of comet particles concentrated in space.

Since Stardust had plentitude of render after the Wild 2 encounter, NASA in 2007 decided to reuse the satellite for a fling with Tempel 1 for $29 meg — a fraction of the outlay it would verify to move a assignment from scratch.

After Valentine's Day, it module hit most a cup of hydrazine render mitt — not enough to visit added target.

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