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back to article NASA's Stardust braves cometary flak

NASA's Stardust spacecraft has survived a close encounter with comet Tempel 1, during which it took a few substantial hits from cometary flak. The craft passed within 111 miles of the comet at 20:40 p.m. PST on 14 February (04:40 GMT on 15 February), and has returned some impressive photos of the distant body. Four views of …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Impact site before and after

    Hmmm, doesn't look like much of a crater to me, are they sure those arrows shouldn't be pointing to that bloody great hole just to the left.

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  2. Winkypop Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Space Boffinery 1

    Flat Earthers 0

    Yay!

    0 1
  3. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Alien

    Are the sure it's a crater?

    Looks more like one of those damn pictures of Jesus that keep appearing on my toast.

    1 0
  4. Steven Knox
    Joke

    Before and After pictures

    So the effect of spacecraft impact on a comet is that the comet becomes more blurry?

    1 0
  5. Luther Blissett

    Luther does science (for a change)

    Method:

    1. Take 1 Opera (sorry for the product placement)

    2. Key Shft+'+ ' a few times

    3. Pick up one wooden ruler, calibrated in mmmmm

    4. Read length of scale bar. Record reading

    5. Read diameter of crater. Record reading

    Results:

    Scale bar = 22mm +/-1mm

    Crate = 5mm +/-0.5mm

    Conclusion:

    Windoze Notepad says crater is 45.454545454545454545454545454545m in diameter (not 150m)

    Surmise: Is this why the new pictures are warm and fuzzy? Observe further: not a single occurrence of 'ice' in the whole item. Seriously, isn't this a falsification of the 'snowy dirtball' model of comets? "We saw a lot of new things that we didn't expect, and we'll be working hard to figure out what Tempel 1 is trying to tell us." Would that be hard as in maths, or hard as in rock?

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    1. Beachrider
      Reply Icon

      What about the "200 m" bar right next to the crater?

      I don't know about Luther's calculation. My simple-country-boy approximation of the crater size to the 200m marking in the picture makes 150m much more likely than 45m.

      Am I misreading something?

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