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NASA prepares for comet fly-by
UPI.com: "WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- NASA is preparing for next week's encounter between its Deep Impact spacecraft and a comet, set to pass within 500 miles of each other, the agency says.
After a voyage of years, the spacecraft will fly by Comet Hartley on Nov. 4, SPACE.com reported.
The near-miss, only the fifth time close-up images of a comet will be captured, will give scientists clues to the early days of the solar system.
Around 2,000 images of the comet have been beamed back to Earth every day since Oct. 1, researchers said.
This is Deep Impact's second comet encounter after serving as the mother ship for NASA's Deep Impact mission, which intentionally sent a probe to crash into Comet Tempel 1 in 2005 to study the object's composition.
The spacecraft has covered about 3.2 billion miles since its January 2005 launch and is approaching Comet Hartley 2 at speeds of about 27,000 mph, NASA says.
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