A NASA spacecraft is fine-tuning its approach to an icy comet and has already snapped photos of it ahead of a planned Valentine's Day visit.
The space agency's Stardust-NExT mission is just one week away from zooming by the comet Tempel 1 Feb. 14 to see what's new since the comet was last visited by a spacecraft in July 2005. Comet Tempel 1 is a ball of ice and rock that orbits the sun every 5½ years.
Scientists say the spacecraft is on track for next week's encounter after firing its thrusters last week to refine its path.
"Encountering something as small and fast as a comet in the vastness of space is always a challenge, but we are very pleased with how things are setting up for our Valentine's Day flyby," Joe Veverka, a Cornell University researcher and principal investigator for the mission, said in a statement.
"This is the first of many images to come of comet Tempel 1," Veverka said.
In addition to capturing high-resolution images of the comet's surface, Stardust-NExT will measure the composition, size distribution and flux of dust particles in the coma, the tenuous atmosphere around the comet's nucleus.
Tempel 1 was visited by NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft, which deliberately sent one of its components crashing into the comet, then took photographs of the cloud of debris that spewed out from the impact. The mission was unable to get clear pictures of the newly formed crater because the dust cloud obscured the view.
The Stardust-NExT science mission is operated out of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver built the probe and manages the day-to-day spacecraft operations.
