Probe captures comet pictures

A space probe has sent back close-up pictures of a city-sized comet that scientists hope will shed more light on the icy solar system bodies.

Speeding at 24,000 mph, Nasa’s Stardust zoomed by comet Tempel 1 last night, snapping more than 70 high-resolution pictures along the way. At nearest approach, the craft passed within 112 miles of the potato-shaped comet – closer than the original prediction.

Instead of erupting in cheers, mission controllers at the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory puzzled over why images from the flyby were not downloading in the order that they want.

They had planned to wow the world by playing back the images in reverse order, starting with five close-up shots of Tempel 1’s nucleus. Instead, the first images to pop up on scientists’ computer screens showed the comet as a tiny speck.

“We still don’t understand fully why this didn’t work the way we planned,” said a spokesman.

All the flyby pictures were stored aboard Stardust. “They’re not lost,” he said.

The glitch meant scientists had to wait several more hours for everything to download to study changes on the comet’s surface.

The flyby, 210 million miles from Earth, is the second time that Tempel 1 has been visited up close.

Onboard dust detectors revealed Stardust took several hits as it swooped past Tempel 1. The craft is armed with bumpers designed to protect it from comet shards as large as half an inch.

Comets are like frozen time capsules because they are thought to contain primordial material preserved from the aftermath of the solar system’s birth 4.5 billion years ago. Studying them could yield clues to how the sun and planets formed.

The last time Nasa visited Tempel 1, it ended in violence. In 2005, Deep Impact fired a copper bullet that slammed into the surface and gouged a crater. The high-speed collision spewed such a huge plume of dust that it obscured Deep Impact’s view.