Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Oct 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.4915f&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #49.15; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.1005
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
NASA's EPOXI mission has repurposed the healthy Deep Impact spacecraft to flyby a smaller, more active comet, 103P/Hartley 2, in order to investigate the observed diversity among comets. The Deep Impact eXtended Investigation (DIXI) began its approach observations of Hartley 2 in September and will flyby Hartley 2 on November 4, 2010. Since Hartley 2 has a much smaller nucleus and larger active fraction than the nuclei of any of the comets visited thus far, it may become possible to discern some of the patterns that lead to the dramatic differences among comets, including differences in surface morphology and chemical heterogeneities found in comae. In addition, we will be able to study whether an active comet has more surface dust. Hence, the observing sequence is optimized for outburst monitoring and high spatial resolution images and spectra of the coma, nucleus and their interface. EPOXI is funded by the NASA Discovery Program.
Dixi Science Team
Feaga Lori M.
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