NASAs Valentine’s Day Fling with a Comet
Scientists say they have seen evidence of a manmade crater in images of comet Tempel 1 taken during a Valentine’s Day flyby. The crater was created by another NASA craft that visited Tempel 1 in 2005. Scientists found signs of scarring left by the Deep Impact mission.
This is the second time NASA has been able to intercept the same comet twice to study how it changes as it moves through its orbit, especially what happens when a comet–made of rock and ice–approaches the sun.
NASA says that all four of its science missions were successful. Three of the goals involved imaging while the fourth collected dust samples which will be brought back to Earth for analysis.
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