Friday, December 16, 2011

Harpooning a comet

NASA building gadget to fire into comets

This actually came up in a mission a couple of decades ago, the Comet Rendezvous - Asteroid Flyby (CRAF), which was canceled for budgetary reasons. Now Goddard Space Flight Center (GFSC) engineers envision a probe with several harpoons with varying propulsive charges for sampling molecules inside these still-puzzling roving bodies.  Very cool - hope it works!

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