[This study] confirms that the water for life on Earth could have come from comets. |
Comets are more different than we thought they were. |
I'm not convinced that there is a solid layer under there. If you look at the icy dust and the density we've deduced for the nucleus itself, something like 75 or 80 percent of the nucleus is empty space. So that tells me that there may be no solid layer. |
is empty space. |
Our analysis of data produced by Deep Impact is revealing a great deal, much of it rather surprising. |
Prior to our Deep Impact experiment, scientists had a lot of questions and untested ideas about the structure and composition of the nucleus, or solid body of a comet, but we had almost no real knowledge, |
Prior to our Deep Impact experiment, scientists had a lot of questions and untested ideas about the structure and composition of the nucleus, or solid body of a comet, but we had almost no real knowledge, ... Our analysis of data produced by Deep Impact is revealing a great deal, much of it rather surprising. |
The comet is mostly empty, |
The comet is mostly empty, mostly porous. Probably all the way in, there is no bulk ice. The ice is all in the form of tiny grains. |
The image clearly shows a spectacular impact. |
These new findings are significant because they show that our technique is effective in finding ice when it is on the surface and that we can therefore firmly conclude that most of the water vapor that escapes from comets is contained in ice particles found below the surface. |
These proposed missions are very cost effective ways to provide new results that can be directly compared to the landmark Deep Impact findings as well as with the results of Deep Space 1 and Stardust. |
This will be the biggest contribution we will make. Many hydrocarbons are in higher abundance than one would expect, and there are many others we haven't identified yet. |
We can therefore firmly conclude that most of the water vapor that escapes from comets is contained in ice particles found below the surface. |
We get one chance lasting 800 seconds to take all of the key data from impact until we've flown past. |