NASA Makes First-ever Follow-up Mission to a Comet

Comet Temple 1 Images - NASA

On February the 14^th, NASA’s Stardust space probe rendezvoused with comet Temple 1 and sent back images of the comet. This is NASA’s second visit to the comet with a space probe.

The first encounter with Temple 1 was on NASA’s Deep Impact mission in 2005. During that mission, the agency used a probe to photograph and then ultimately crash a portion of the probe into the surface causing parts of the comet to blast up from the surface. They were then able to analyze some of the debris.

The Stardust probe was originally sent to rendezvous with Comet Wild 2, after which scientists realized that they had enough propellant left over to send the probe on another mission. The new mission, named Stardust-NExT, had the Stardust probe swing by the Earth, where it dropped off its samples from Wild 2, and then continued on to its encounter with Temple 1 at 11:39 EST.

As Stardust passed the Earth on January 15, 2006, it jettisoned its capsule with the Wild 2 samples which landed safely and were recovered by the team southwest of Salt Lake City, UT. It was the first comet sample ever returned to the earth by a probe.