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CONTOUR Arrives at the Cape; NASA Comet-Chasing Spacecraft on Track for July 1 Launch All packed up and ready for its long-awaited trip, NASA's CONTOUR spacecraft left home in Maryland for Cape Canaveral, Fla., site of its scheduled July 1 launch toward an unprecedented comet study. Secured in an air-ride, climate-controlled shipping container, CONTOUR set out from Goddard and reached Cape Canaveral Air Force Station/Kennedy Space Centeron Wednesday. CONTOUR - short for Comet Nucleus Tour - had spent the past eight weeks being baked, frozen, spun, shaken and probed in Goddard's test facilities, getting a dose of the conditions it will face during launch and in space. "Our spacecraft is ready and the team is anxious to start final preparations for launch," says CONTOUR Project Manager Mary C. Chiu, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., which designed and built the compact 8-sided, 6-foot by 7-foot spacecraft. After a predawn launch aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket, CONTOUR will encounter two very different comets as they zoom through the inner solar system. From as close as 60 miles (about 100 kilometers) away, the spacecraft will snap the sharpest pictures yet of a comet's nucleus, map the types of rock and ice on the surface and analyze the surrounding gas and dust. CONTOUR's target comets include Encke in November 2003 and Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 in June 2006, though the mission team can steer the solar-powered probe to a scientifically attractive "new" comet should the opportunity arise. Fir the complete
article, go to: http://www.jhuapl.edu/public/pr/020423.htm
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