On July 4 an 820-pound copper bullet will smash into comet Tempel 1 at 23,000 miles per hour. The blast and the resulting crater should lift a veil on the mysterious innards of comets, believed to be pristine material from the beginning of the solar system. One of the most interested observers will be H. Jay Melosh, a professor at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and a member of NASA’s Deep Impact science team. He was the first scientist to suggest seriously that microorganisms could have traveled from one planet to another on meteors in the early days of the solar system.
Deep Impact sounds like caveman science: “Throw rock, make hole.”
M: You could characterize it that way, but an awful lot of science boils down to just that. You could use refined words about probing deeper, but we’ve had lots of luck explaining this mission ...
