blobrana
12-30-07, 11:15 AM
In your skies now...
"After its encounter with Tempel 1, the Deep Impact spacecraft, now being used for the EPOXI mission, continued in its orbit around the sun that would bring it past Earth late this year. Along the way, there have been some trajectory correction manoeuvres (TCMs) to adjust the spacecraft's path so that after the flyby it will be in an orbit (white circles) that will intersect with comet Hartley 2 in 2010. During the flyby, the spacecraft will experience a gravity assist from Earth that will steal some of the orbital energy from the spacecraft, changing its orbit from the yellow path to the white one. Additional Earth flybys in 2008 and 2009 will refine the orbit even further."
Read more (http://epoxi.umd.edu/1mission/flyby.shtml)
"After its encounter with Tempel 1, the Deep Impact spacecraft, now being used for the EPOXI mission, continued in its orbit around the sun that would bring it past Earth late this year. Along the way, there have been some trajectory correction manoeuvres (TCMs) to adjust the spacecraft's path so that after the flyby it will be in an orbit (white circles) that will intersect with comet Hartley 2 in 2010. During the flyby, the spacecraft will experience a gravity assist from Earth that will steal some of the orbital energy from the spacecraft, changing its orbit from the yellow path to the white one. Additional Earth flybys in 2008 and 2009 will refine the orbit even further."
Read more (http://epoxi.umd.edu/1mission/flyby.shtml)