Blast of a Comet

My husband and I dragged the kids to the Planetary Society's Comet Bash last Sunday night at Citrus College Performing Arts Building in Glendora. The presentation had great speakers. Louis Friedman, Executive Director of the Planetary Society talked about the Cosmos 1 Solar Sail. The Russian rocket shot out of a submarine failed about 83 seconds into flight never making it to space. Dr. Friedman was trying to be nice without saying bad things about the Volna rocket. There will be another launch (they have enough spare parts) but with another rocket. I suggest talking to Elon Musk at Space X (a board member of Planetary Society).

The second speaker was Apollo 9 Astronaut Rusty Schweickart, chairman of B612 Foundation. His topic was about Near-Earth Asteroid and Earth Impact Update. NEO's are objects that cross the earth's orbit with short period orbits. He talked about an Asteroid 2004 that will be within 3 Sigma ellipse on 4/13/2029 (Friday 13th). He talked to Congress in May about the possibility of setting up a mission to "bump" a NEO to move its orbit away from Earth. Two things that hamper this, there is no international group heading up a mission or overseeing NEO's and second, NASA is holding off the Nuclear engine program.

Bill Nye the Science Guy (Vice President of the Planetary Society) then talked about Comets and why the Deep Impact project is important. Comets are very old (more than 4.5 billon years) and contain elements present at the beginning of the solar system. He is a great speaker and the Kids loved it.

Bill Smythe, a Deep Impact Mission Scientist talked more about the mission hardware and Deep Impact probe. He worked on the imaging cameras on the spacecraft(s). He was interrupted when the first pictures came in on NASA TV.

The fantastic pictures were neat to view with other space enthusiasts. Commentary was provided by the Bills (Nye and Smythe) and Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society.