Two NASA probes
well past their prime have a fresh lease on life and new missions ahead, the
space agency announced Tuesday.
The motherships
for NASA's completed Deep
Impact and Stardust
missions - which smacked one comet and returned samples from another to
Earth, respectively - are being retargeted for new science through about 2011.
"These
mission extensions are as exciting as it gets," said Alan Stern, NASA's
associate administer for the agency's Science Mission Directorate, in a
statement. "They will allow us to revisit a comet for the first time, add
another to the list of comets explored and make a search for small planets
around stars with known large planets."
By using
veteran spacecraft already in space, researchers can complete the experiments
about 15 percent the cost of completely new missions, Stern said.
After
the comet crash
NASA tapped
Deep Impact's remaining Flyby mothership, which successfully unleashed its
Impactor probe to crash
into the Comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005, for two new science missions,
though only one includes another comet.
The
spacecraft, which is about the size of a mid-size sport utility vehicle and
carries two cameras, will be recycled into NASA's EPOXI mission aimed at two
science objectives.
Under
EPOXI, the Flyby vehicle will perform the Deep Impact Expected Investigation
(DIXI) to swing by the unexplored Comet Boethin on Dec. 5, 2008 in an effort to
recoup comparative data lost with the 2002 failure of NASA's COmet Nucleus
Tour (CONTOUR) mission.
A second
science experiment, dubbed Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization
(EPOCh), calls for Flyby to turn its camera eyes onto stars harboring known
giant planets to watch as the extrasolar worlds transit across the faces of
their stellar parents. The experiment, researchers hope, will help identify
possible rings and moons around the large planets, as well as any additional
Earth-sized planets nearby as Flyby heads for its rendezvous with Comet Boethin.
"EPOXI
is a wonderful opportunity to add to our growing body of knowledge of
exoplanets," NASA chief scientist John Mather, of the agency's Science Mission
Directorate, said in a statement. 'Watching planets go behind or in front of
their parent stars can tell us about their atmospheric chemistry."
Stardust
returns
While the
Flyby spacecraft heads off to a new comet, NASA's Stardust probe will actually
revisit Deep Impact's Tempel 1 target.
Originally
launched in 1999, Stardust chased down the Comet Wild 2 (pronounced "Vilt 2")
for a 2004 rendezvous that swung within 150 miles (241 kilometers) of the icy
wanderer. A sample canister aboard Stardust caught tiny pieces of Wild 2 and returned
them to Earth in January 2006 while the remainder of the probe continued on
through space.
Now the office
desk-sized Stardust will perform the New Exploration of Tempel 1 (NExT) mission
to take the first look at the comet after its innermost swing past the Sun.
Stardust is
due to swing past Tempel 1 in what will be the first ever follow-up comet
rendezvous. The spacecraft's onboard instruments will continue mapping efforts
for Tempel 1 and, researchers hope, shed new light on regions of the comet's
nucleus that may have flowed like
liquid or powder according to Deep Impact images.
The NExT
flyby past Tempel 1 is slated for Feb. 14, 2011.
The mission
extensions for both Deep Impact and Stardust missions are part of NASA's
Discovery program like their original assignments.
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