Sep 6 2005
From The Space Library
Scientists published the first research findings from NASA's Deep Impact mission, which had revealed important and unexpected findings about comets. On 4 July 2005, a probe from the Deep Impact spacecraft had performed a planned crash into the comet Tempel 1, while various observatories and the spacecraft's observational vehicle analyzed the impact. One of the most important findings was the presence of organic material in the comet, a discovery that supported theories that comets may have seeded Earth with the chemical precursors to life. However, scientists were surprised to find that the frozen comet contained minerals that require liquid water, not frozen water, to form. Scientists also puzzled over the presence of minerals that form in warmer temperatures than those present in the outer margins of the solar system, where they believed that comets had originated. Just as surprising to researchers was the discovery that the comet was not composed of solid ice, but that, instead, it had a fragile shell of ice covering a highly porous interior composed largely of dust. (Kenneth Chang, “Composition of a Comet Poses a Puzzle for Scientists,” New York Times, 7 September 2005; John Johnson Jr., “Snowy Dirtball Is Melting Old Theories,” Los Angeles Times, 7 September 2005.)
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