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DEEP IMPACT CAPTURES FOOTAGE OF THE MOON TRANSITIONING EARTH FROM DEEP SPACE
"Making
a video of Earth from so far away helps the search for other life-bearing
planets in the Universe by giving insights into how a distant, Earth-like alien
world would appear to us," said University of Maryland astronomer Michael
A’Hearn, principal investigator for the Deep Impact extended mission, called
EPOXI.
Deep Impact made history when the mission team directed an impactor from the
spacecraft into comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005. NASA recently extended the
mission, redirecting the spacecraft for a flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 4,
2010.
EPOXI is a combination of the names for the two extended mission components: a
search for alien (extrasolar) planets during the cruise to Hartley 2, called
Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization (EPOCh), and the flyby of
comet Hartley 2, called the Deep Impact eXtended Investigation (DIXI).
During a full Earth rotation, images obtained by Deep Impact at a 15-minute
cadence have been combined to make a color video. During the video, the moon
enters the frame (because of its orbital motion) and transits Earth, then leaves
the frame. Other spacecraft have imaged Earth and the moon from space, but Deep
Impact is the first to show a transit of Earth with enough detail to see large
craters on the moon and oceans and continents on Earth.
MORE: http://www.physorg.com/news135605643.html
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