Deep Impact Mission: Looking Beneath the Surface of a Cometary Nucleus

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Deep Impact Mission: Looking Beneath the Surface of a Cometary Nucleus DEEP IMPACT MISSION: LOOKING BENEATH THE SURFACE OF A COMETARY NUCLEUS Front cover: Comet Tempel 1 and the Flyby Spacecraft, artist: Pat Rawlings Back cover: The Deep Impact Flyby Spacecraft and released Impact Spacecraft heading toward comet Tempel 1, graphic rendering: Ball Aerospace & Technology Corporation. DEEP IMPACT MISSION: LOOKING BENEATH THE SURFACE OF A COMETARY NUCLEUS Edited by CHRISTOPHER T. RUSSELL University of California, California, USA Reprinted from Space Science Reviews, Volume 117, Nos. 1–2, 2005 A.C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN: 1-4020-3599-3 Published by Springer P.O. Box 990, 3300 AZ Dordrecht, The Netherlands Sold and distributed in North, Central and South America by Springer, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Springer, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved c 2005 Springer No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner Printed in the Netherlands TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword vii MICHAEL F. A’HEARN, MICHAEL J. S. BELTON, ALAN DELAMERE and WILLIAM H. BLUME / Deep Impact: A Large- Scale Active Experiment on a Cometary Nucleus 1–21 WILLIAM H. BLUME / Deep Impact Mission Design 23–42 DONALD L. HAMPTON, JAMES W. BAER, MARTIN A. HUISJEN, CHRIS C. VARNER, ALAN DELAMERE, DENNIS D. WELLNITZ, MICHAEL F. A’HEARN and KENNETH P. KLAASEN / An Overview of the Instrument Suite for the Deep Impact Mission 43–93 NIKOS MASTRODEMOS, DANIEL G. KUBITSCHEK and STEPHEN P. SYNNOTT / Autonomous Navigation for the Deep Impact Mission Encounter with Comet Tempel 1 95–121 DONALD K. YEOMANS, JON D. GIORGINI and STEVEN R. CHESLEY / The History and Dynamics of Comet 9P/Tempel 1 123–135 MICHAEL J. S. BELTON, KAREN J. MEECH, MICHAEL F. A’HEARN, OLIVIER GROUSSIN, LUCY MCFADDEN, CAREY LISSE, YANGA R. FERNANDEZ,´ JANA PITTICHOVA,´ HENRY HSIEH, JOCHEN KISSEL, KENNETH KLAASEN, PHILIPPE LAMY, DINA PRIALNIK, JESSICA SUNSHINE, PETER THOMAS and IMRE TOTH / Deep Impact: Working Properties for the Target Nucleus – Comet 9P/Tempel 1 137–160 C. M. LISSE, M. F. A’HEARN, T. L. FARNHAM, O. GROUSSIN, K. J. MEECH, U. FINK and D. G. SCHLEICHER / The Coma of Comet 9P/Tempel 1 161–192 PETER C. THOMAS, JOSEPH VEVERKA, MICHAEL F. A’HEARN, LUCY MCFADDEN, MICHAEL J. S. BELTON and JESSICA M. SUNSHINE / Comet Geology with Deep Impact Remote Sensing 193–205 PETER H. SCHULTZ, CAROLYN M. ERNST and JENNIFER L. B. ANDERSON / Expectations for Crater Size and Photometric Evolu- tion from the Deep Impact Collision 207–239 JAMES E. RICHARDSON, H. JAY MELOSH, NATASHA A. ARTEMEIVA and ELISABETTA PIERAZZO / Impact Cratering Theory and Modeling for the Deep Impact Mission: From Mission Planning to Data Analysis 241–267 JESSICA M. SUNSHINE, MICHAEL F. A’HEARN, OLIVIER GROUSSIN, LUCY A. MCFADDEN, KENNETH P. KLAASEN, PETER H. SCHULTZ and CAREY M. LISSE / Expectations for Infrared Spectroscopy of 9P/Tempel 1 from Deep Impact 269–295 K. J. MEECH, M. F. A’HEARN, Y. R. FERNANDEZ,´ C. M. LISSE, H. A. WEAVER, N. BIVER and L. M. WOODNEY / The Deep Impact Earth-Based Campaign 297–334 KENNETH P. KLAASEN, BRIAN CARCICH, GEMMA CARCICH, EDWIN J. GRAYZECK and STEPHANIE MCLAUGHLIN / Deep Impact: The Anticipated Flight Data 335–372 L. A. MCFADDEN, M. K. ROUNTREE-BROWN, E. M. WARNER, S. A. MCLAUGHLIN, J. M. BEHNE, J. D. RISTVEY, S. BAIRD- WILKERSON, D. K. DUNCAN, S. D. GILLAM, G. H. WALKER and K. J. MEECH / Education and Public Outreach for Nasa’s Deep Impact Mission 373–396 FOREWORD Deep Impact is NASA’s answer to the media’s concern that robotic exploration is becoming boring. Deep Impact does more than just address its scientific objectives. It attacks them. It is an active mission, an energetic mission, a mission on a mission! It is a risky mission whose architecture is complex. The two spacecraft must work together, communicate, co-navigate. The flyby spacecraft must see the impact site. The impactor is aimed at the lit surface for better imagery; perhaps it will hit in a shadowed area. We do not know well the physical properties of the cometary nucleus. Is it dense and rigid or is it friable with many voids like pumice? Will there be a deep crater or a shallow crater? Will the nucleus breakup? Will the impactor go right through the nucleus? Will the comet suddenly become active? There are models, theories, ideas and wild guesses as to what will happen but at this writing they can be all lumped together as scientific speculation, as we have never been this close to a comet nucleus before. It is new territory for space exploration and the planetary scientist. This volume provides an in depth examination of the Deep Impact mission: the system architecture, the scientific payload, the history and dynamics of the target, 9 P/Tempel 1, and the expected properties of the nucleus and the coma. It also describes the expected results of the mission: remote sensing of the geology of the surface, the size of the crater and the spectroscopy of the materials ejected. The auxiliary observations from 1 AU are described as are the returned data and the ground system that processes it. Lastly there is a discussion of the Education and Public Outreach Program for Deep Impact. Assembling this volume required the efforts of many individuals who graciously donated their time to this effort. The referees and authors deserve much appreciation as they proceeded with this project in near record time, producing a most readable and complete description of the mission. We wish to thank especially Marjorie Sowmendran who assisted in the editorial office, and kept the process moving smoothly and promptly to completion. C. T. Russell University of California, Los Angeles February, 2005 DEEP IMPACT: A LARGE-SCALE ACTIVE EXPERIMENT ON A COMETARY NUCLEUS MICHAEL F. A’HEARN1,∗, MICHAEL J. S. BELTON2, ALAN DELAMERE3 and WILLIAM H. BLUME4 1Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-2421, U.S.A. 2Belton Space Exploration Initiatives, LLC, Tucson, AZ, U.S.A. 3Delamere Support Services, Boulder, CO, U.S.A. 4Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, U.S.A. (∗Author for correspondence; e-mail: [email protected]) (Received 20 August 2004; Accepted in final form 14 January 2005) Abstract. The Deep Impact mission will provide the first data on the interior of a cometary nucleus and a comparison of those data with data on the surface. Two spacecraft, an impactor and a flyby spacecraft, will arrive at comet 9P/Tempel 1 on 4 July 2005 to create and observe the formation and final properties of a large crater that is predicted to be approximately 30-m deep with the dimensions of a football stadium. The flyby and impactor instruments will yield images and near infrared spectra (1– 5 µm) of the surface at unprecedented spatial resolutions both before and after the impact of a 350-kg spacecraft at 10.2 km/s. These data will provide unique information on the structure of the nucleus near the surface and its chemical composition. They will also used to interpret the evolutionary effects on remote sensing data and will indicate how those data can be used to better constrain conditions in the early solar system. Keywords: comets, space missions, solar system formation, craters, chemical composition 1. Introduction and History The Deep Impact mission was conceived as a proposal to NASA’s Discovery Program because we know so little about cometary nuclei and because missions that either land or do remote sensing cannot easily make measurements far enough be- low the surface to have a chance to characterize primitive cometary material. When the comets formed 4.5 Gy ago, they formed at very low temperatures from a mixture of different ices that is expected to be very sensitive to the actual temperatures at which they formed (e.g., Bar-Nun and Laufer, 2003; and references therein). The comets also included a mixture of more refactory materials including a broad range of both organics and silicates (e.g., Langevin et al., 1987), Because the comets are small (<100 km), whether they formed at their present sizes or represent fragments of somewhat larger Trans-Neptunian objects, they have not been subject to much internal heating and they therefore preserve a record of conditions in the outer half of the protoplanetary disk. On the other hand, the surface layers of comets have evolved (see Section 2.3), in some cases due to solar heating at previous perihelion Space Science Reviews (2005) 117: 1–21 DOI: 10.1007/s11214-005-3387-3 C Springer 2005 2 M. F. A’HEARN ET AL. passages and in other cases due to irradiation by galactic cosmic rays. The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission is now on its way to place a lander on the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (up-to-date information on the status of this mission can be obtained in the internet at http://www.esa.int/export/esaMI/Rosetta). The Rosetta lander, which will probe into the uppermost meter of the nucleus, was an enormous engineering challenge because of the uncertainty in the cometary properties. The concept of Deep Impact arose while thinking about how to make measurements far enough below the evolved surface materials to have a substantial chance to probe cometary material that is essentially unchanged since the forma- tion of the solar system 4.5 Gy ago.
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