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July
5, 2002
CONTOUR Spacecraft Launches from Cape Canaveral NASA's Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR) spacecraft - set to provide the closest look yet at the heart" of a comet - successfully launched Wednesday, July 3 at 2:47 a.m. EDT aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. Designed and built by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., the 2,138-pound (970-kilogram) spacecraft was placed into an elliptical Earth orbit 63 minutes after launch. About 19 minutes later the mission operations team at APL acquired a signal from the spacecraft through the Deep Space Network antenna station in Goldstone, Calif., and by 5:45 a.m. EDT Mission Director Dr. Robert W. Farquhar of the Applied Physics Lab confirmed the craft was operating normally and ready to carry out its early orbit maneuvers. CONTOUR's flexible four-year plan includes encounters with comets Encke (Nov. 12, 2003) and Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 (June 19, 2006), though it can add an encounter with a "new" and scientifically valuable comet from the outer solar system, should one be discovered in time for CONTOUR to fly past it. CONTOUR's four scientific istruments will take detailed pictures and measure the chemical makeup of each comet's nucleus - a chunk of ice and rock - while analyzing the surrounding gas and dust. Employees at the Atmospheric Experiment Branch at Goddard developed CONTOUR's Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS). This instrument is designed to measure the chemical and isotopic composition of the neutral gas and ion species near the nucleus of each comet during the fast CONTOUR flybys. The data will give scientists information about chemical conditions in the early stages of solar system formation. For more information on the CONTOUR mission, go to: http://www.contour2002.org/
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NASA
's Mission: For a further details of the NASA mission, go to: http://www.nasa.gov/bios/vision.html Mark Your Calendars, Celebrate Goddard Day is July 11! General Dailey Pays Tribute to the Hubble Project Your Supervisor Wants Your Feedback
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