Comet to collide with earth ?

[mswarrior]

This was on CNN today, note the red caption below.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida -- Not all dazzling fireworks displays will be on Earth this Independence Day.

NASA hopes to shoot off its own celestial sparks in a mission that will blast a stadium-sized hole in a comet.

It would give astronomers their first peek at the inside of one of these heavenly bodies.

If all goes as planned, the Deep Impact spacecraft will release a wine barrel-sized probe on a suicide mission hurtling toward the comet Tempel 1 -- about 80 million miles (129 million kilometers) away from Earth at the time of impact.

Scientists hope the July 4 collision will gouge a crater in the comet's surface large enough to reveal the pristine core and perhaps yield cosmic clues to the origin of the solar system.

The first pictures sent back to Earth from Deep Impact show that the Tempel 1 comet has a core of about 14 kilometers by five kilometers.

The images, taken at a distance of 33 million kilometers away from Tempel 1, showed it was shrouded in clouds of dust and gas.

Using the pictures, scientists can now determine exactly where on the comet the probe will hit.

After impact, it is hoped that the probe will allow astronomers to peer inside the comet and record matter and data dating back to the origins of the solar system.

Deep Impact and the comet are hurtling toward each other at 37,000 kilometers per hour.

When they collide, the impact will be bright enough to see on Earth, using binoculars.

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Does the caption set off some alarms?

The capsule they are sending to the Comet came from earth and they are stating they are heading towards each other. Something to think about.

The story can be viewed on CNN,

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/ ... x.html[url][/url]

[AmericanWeiner]

No where in the text you posted does it say the comet is headed towards Deep Impact. I would suspect only the opposite is true.

[t_bonee]

The comet isn't heading for Earth luckily. They launched the satellite on an intercept course a few years ago. If I remember correctly, it was behind it for awhile to collect dust samples and what not. Then it was swung around in front of it some time ago to prepare to launch the probe head on at it for maximum destruction

[Gadjet]

If you want the facts on the mission, as well as the satellite's flight path, you can check out the mission home page here