Contour: The Comet Nucleus Tour Mission
Target Selection: emphasis on diversity and unique objects. Flybys of three comets.
comets Discovery Program↗
SEARCH · Search NASA
Results for “comets Discovery Program”
Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
Maneuver Analysis for the Stardust Mission
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
low-cost Discovery Program comet's coma sample cap↗
Comets and the KAO
Seven comets have been observed from the Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO) in its twenty year history. Of these, comets p/Halley (1986 3) and Comet Wilson (1987 7) produced significant scientific results. Comet Halley was a bright and highly predictable comet that allowed a well-planned and coordinated observing program. Comet Wilson, on the other hand, was a dynamically new comet discovered only a few months before perihelion. In this paper we review the scientific discoveries made by the airborne program and the KAO on these comets, including the discovery of water, new structure in the silicate emission band, and a number of as yet unexplained spectral features.
Lynch, David K.↗
Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) Program
The discoveries of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and Comets have increased enormously over the last 10-20 years. This is a consequence, in large part, of the success of programs that have systematically searched for these objects.
Asteroids↗
Odyssey comet nucleus orbiter: a Discovery proposal
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
comet rendezvous mission Discovery program↗
STARDUST: Discovery's InterStellar Dust and Cometary Sample Return Mission
The STARDUST Discovery mission will collect samples of cometary and interstellar dust and return them to Earth. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory provides project management with Lockheed Martin Astronautics as the spacecraft industrial partner. STARDUST management is aggressively pursuing cost control through the use of Total Quality Management principles, specifically operating in a Project Engineering and Integration Team that
STARDUST↗
Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) Program
The discoveries of near-Earth asteroids (NEA's) and comets have increased enormously over the last 10-20 years. This is a consequence in large par; of the success of programs that have systematically searched for these objects. These programs have been motivated by the relationships of NEA's to terrestrial impacts, meteorites, comets, and their relative accessibility to spacecraft missions. This paper will review the long-term Palomar Planet Crossing Asteroid Survey (PCAS) a photographic program and the current Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) system NASA's new electronic detection program. The primary goal of NEAT is to discover and inventory near-Earth asteroids and comets, collectively called near-Earth objects or NEO's, larger than 1 km in size. Details of the NEAT system and program results are presented and discussed.
Helin, Eleanor F.↗
Future Mission Proposal Opportunities: Discovery, New Frontiers, and Project Prometheus
The NASA Office of Space Science is expanding opportunities to propose missions to comets, asteroids, and other solar system targets. The Discovery Program continues to be popular, with two sample return missions, Stardust and Genesis, currently in operation. The New Frontiers Program, a new proposal opportunity modeled on the successful Discovery Program, begins this year with the release of its first Announcement of Opportunity. Project Prometheus, a program to develop nuclear electric power and propulsion technology intended to enable a new class of high-power, high-capability investigations, is a third opportunity to propose solar system exploration. All three classes of mission include a commitment to provide data to the Planetary Data System, any samples to the NASA Curatorial Facility at Johnson Space Center, and programs for education and public outreach.
Niebur, S. M.↗
Odyssey, a comet nucleus orbiter
Odyssey is an exciting comet nucleus orbiter mission submitted to the Discovery 2000 Annoucement of Opportunity.
comets solar system exploration Discovery program↗
Hummingbird Comet Nucleus Analysis Mission
Hummingbird is a highly focused scientific mission, proposed to NASA s Discovery Program, designed to address the highest priority questions in cometary science-that of the chemical composition of the cometary nucleus. After rendezvous with the comet, Hummingbird would first methodically image and map the comet, then collect and analyze dust, ice and gases from the cometary atmosphere to enrich characterization of the comet and support landing site selection. Then, like its namesake, Hummingbird would carefully descend to a pre-selected surface site obtaining a high-resolution image, gather a surface material sample, acquire surface temperature and then immediately return to orbit for detailed chemical and elemental analyses followed by a high resolution post-sampling image of the site. Hummingbird s analytical laboratory contains instrumentation for a comprehensive molecular and elemental analysis of the cometary nucleus as well as an innovative surface sample acquisition device.
Kojiro, Daniel↗
NASA's Discovery Program: Moving Toward the Edge (of the Solar System)
NASA's Planetary Science , Division sponsors a competitive program of small spacecraft missions with the goal of performing focused science investigations that complement NASA's larger planetary science explorations at relatively low cost. The goal of the Discovery program is to launch many smaller missions with fast development times to increase our understanding of the solar system by exploring the planets, dwarf planets, their moons, and small bodies such as comets and asteroids. Discovery missions are solicited from the broad planetary science community approximately every 2 years. Active missions within the Discovery program include several with direct scientific or engineering connections to potential future missions to the edge of the solar system and beyond. In addition to those in the Discovery program are the missions of the New Frontiers program. The first New Frontiers mission. is the New Horizons mission to Pluto, which will explore this 38-AU distant dwarf planet and potentially some Kuiper Belt objects beyond. The Discovery program's Dawn mission, when launched in mid-2007, will use ion drive as its primary propulsion system. Ion propulsion is one of only two technologies that appear feasible for early interstellar precursor missions with practical flight times. The Kepler mission will explore the structure and diversity of extrasolar planetary systems, with an emphasis on the detection of Earth-size planets around other stars. Kepler will survey nearby solar systems searching for planets that may fall within the habitable zone,' a region surrounding a star within which liquid water may exist on a planet's surface - an essential ingredient for life as we know it. With its open and competitive approach to mission selections, the Discovery program affords scientists the opportunity to propose missions to virtually any solar system destination. With its emphasis on science and proven openness to the use of new technologies such as ion propulsion, missions flown as part of the program will test out technologies needed for future very deep-space exploration and potentially take us to these difficult and distant destinations.
Johnson, Les↗
Search for near-Earth asteroids with the spacewatch camera
The Spacewatch Program began as an engineering development of the discovery of near-earth asteroids and comets, with the firs observations starting in 1983, using an RCA charge coupled device (CCD) that has 320 x 512 pixels. Extensive software was written to scan the sky and learn how to do astrometry for precise orbits of newly discovered objects. The merit of the concept was proven, with many observations reported and comets recovered. The precision of astrometric observations for comets and asteroids was improved. For efficient scanning and discovery of new objects, a Tektronix 2048 x 2048 CCD was obtained and is now permanently on the Spacewatch Telescope. Other aspects of the Spacewatch Program are briefly discussed.
Gehrels, T.↗
A Participating Scientist Program for the STARDUST Mission
It is the Policy of NASA s Office of Space Science to emphasize and encourage the addition of Participating Scientist Programs (PSP s) to broaden the scientific impact of missions. A Participating Scientist Program for the STARDUST Mission: STARDUST is the fourth Discovery mission, and it is the first sample return mission selected within the Discovery Program. The STARDUST Spacecraft will fly through the coma of comet PIwildt-2 in early January 2004, and return the samples to the Earth in January 2006. The Principal Investigator of the STARDUST mission, Dr. Donald Brownlee, has generously requested the implementation of a PSP for STARDUST in order to provide more community participation in the initial characterization and analysis of the samples from PIwildt-2. In particular participating scientists will fill out the membership of the Preliminary Examination Team (PET) called for in the original 1994 STARDUST proposal accepted by NASA in 1995. The work of the PET will be organized around major subdiscipline areas such as mineralogy and petrology, isotopic abundances, and elemental composition. There will be leaders for each of these areas, and also a number of team members within each. Support will be commensurate with the level of participation.
Morgan, T. H.↗
Deep Impact Extended Mission Challenges for the Validation and Verification Test Program
The Deep Impact Spacecraft was launched on January 12, 2005 as part of NASA's Discovery Program as a radical mission to excavate the interior of a comet. The Spacecraft consisted of two separate entities known as the Flyby and the Impactor, which were commanded to separate prior to comet rendezvous with comet 9P/Tempel 1. The overall mission was deemed a success on July 4, 2005, as the 370-kg Impactor collided with the comet at 10.2 km/s. This event was captured using the camera and infrared spectrometer on the Flyby spacecraft, along with ground-based observatories. Since this event, the Flyby spacecraft has been in hibernation mode and has received only a small amount of maintenance. The Deep Impact Program was managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), led by Dr. Michael A'Hearn from the University of Maryland in College Park, and built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colorado.
Test Bench↗
Stardust Mission Design
STARDUST is the fourth mission in a series from the NASA Discovery Program. It is a sample return mission, primarily aimed at returning comet coma samples to Earth for extensive laboratory analysis.
Stardust↗
Observational Search for Cometary Aging Processes
The scientific objectives of this study were (i) to search for physical differences in the behavior of the dynamically new comets (those which are entering the solar system for the first time from the Oort cloud) and the periodic comets, and (ii) to interpret these differences, if any, in terms of the physical and chemical nature of the comets and the evolutionary histories of the two comet groups. Because outer solar system comets may be direct remnants of the planetary formation processes, it is clear that the understanding of both the physical characteristics of these bodies at the edge of the planet forming zone and of their activity at large heliocentric distances, r, will ultimately provide constraints on the planetary formation process both in our Solar System and in extra-solar planetary systems. A combination of new solar system models which suggest that the protoplanetary disk was relatively massive and as a consequence comets could form at large distances from the sun (e.g. from the Uranus-Neptune region to the vicinity of the Kuiper belt), observations of activity in comets at large r, and laboratory experiments on low temperature volatile condensation, are dramatically changing our understanding of the chemical'and physical conditions in the early solar nebula. In order to understand the physical processes driving the apparent large r activity, and to address the question of possible physical and chemical differences between periodic, non-periodic and Oort comets, the PI has been undertaking a long-term study of the behavior of a significant sample of these comets (approximately 50) over a wide range of r to watch the development, disappearance and changing morphology of the dust coma. The ultimate goal is to search for systematic physical differences between the comet classes by modelling the coma growth in terms of volatile-driven activity. The systematic observations for this have been ongoing since 1986, and have been obtained over the course of approximately 300 nights using the telescopes on Mauna Kea, Kitt Peak, Cerro Tololo, the European Southern Observatory, and several other large aperture facilities. A greater than 2 TB database of broad band comet images has been obtained which follows the systematic development and fading of the cometary coma for the comets in the database. The results to date, indicate that there is a substantial difference in the brightness and the amount of dust as a function of r between the two comet classes. In addition to this major finding, the program has been responsible for several exciting discoveries, including: the P/Halley outburst at r = 14.3 AU, the discovery of Chiron's coma and modelling and observations of the gravitationally bound component, observational evidence that activity continues out beyond r = 17 AU for many dynamically new comets
Meech, Karen J.↗
EPOXI and Stardust NExT: The Management Challenges of Two Comet Flybys in Three Months
The EPOXI and Stardust NExT missions were missions of opportunity utilizing the Deep Impact and Stardust spacecraft, respectively. These new missions took advantage of the cost savings of utilizing spacecraft that were already flying for new science investigations. Both were retargeted to fly by an additional comet. EPOXI visited Hartley 2, significantly smaller than the other Jupiter family comets visited previously. Stardust NExT flew by Tempel 1, providing a second look at the comet previously studied by Deep Impact in 2005. Both projects were part of NASA's Discovery Program. In order to further save costs, the projects were combined into a single project office at JPL. This provided some efficiencies due to the similarity of the missions, but having the flybys space only three months apart posed challenges for the project management team to ensure each project was ready for its critical event and ensuring each received the proper support from the management team. The project office relied on an integrated calendar for tracking and scheduling meetings, reviews, and other key events. The project management team also coordinated their availability for both projects to maintain involvement with each team to ensure effective risk identification and management.
NExT (New Exploration of Tempel 1)↗
CCD scanning for asteroids and comets
A change coupled device (CCD) is used in a scanning mode to find new asteroids and recover known asteroids and comet nuclei. Current scientific programs include recovery of asteroids and comet nuclei requested by the Minor Planet Center (MPC), discovery of new asteroids in the main belt and of unusual orbital types, and follow-up astrometry of selected new asteroids discovered. The routine six sigma limiting visual magnitude is 19.6 and slightly more than a square degree is scanned three times every 90 minutes of observing time during the fortnight centered on New Moon. Semiautomatic software for detection of moving objects is in routine use; angular speeds as low as 11.0 arcseconds per hour were distinguished from the effects of the Earth's atmosphere on the field of view. A typical set of three 29-minute scans near the opposition point along the ecliptic typically nets at least 5 new main-belt asteroids down to magnitude 19.6. In 18 observing runs (months) 43 asteroids were recovered, astrometric and photometric data on 59 new asteroids were reported, 10 new asteroids with orbital elements were consolidated, and photometry and positions of 22 comets were reported.
Gehrels, T.↗