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From: dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd)
Newsgroups: net.astro
Subject: StarDate: September 11 The International Comet Explorer
Message-ID: <518@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 18-Sep-84 02:00:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.518
Posted: Tue Sep 18 02:00:25 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Sep-84 04:54:16 EDT
Organization: UTexas Astronomy Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 38

The first encounter of a spacecraft with a comet is scheduled to take
place one year from today.  We'll talk about NASA's International Comet
Explorer -- after this.

September 11  The International Comet Explorer

The United States won't be sending a spacecraft to Comet Halley --
although the Soviet Union, Japan and Europe will.  But on this date one
year from now, if all goes as planned, a NASA spacecraft WILL make the
first-ever rendezvous with another comet.

The spacecraft is the International Comet Explorer -- or ICE -- first
launched in 1978 on a totally different mission.  The original mission
was to monitor the solar wind -- a stream of electrically charged
particles from the sun.  In its position between the sun and Earth, the
spacecraft performed its duty faithfully for many years.

Then in 1983 -- when it looked as though the U.S. wouldn't have a comet
mission -- NASA hit on the clever idea of sending a spacecraft already
in orbit.  That craft is ICE -- which was sent on a series of looping
trajectories that brought it near the lunar surface -- then thrust the
craft out of the Earth-moon system -- towards an encounter with Comet
Giacobini-Zinner.

No television cameras are on board the craft, so there won't be
pictures of the comet.  But the spacecraft carries equipment designed
to make important measurements of ionized gases -- the type of gases
contained in comets' tails.  ICE is scheduled to pass through the tail
of Comet Giacobini- Zinner on today's date in 1985.  And by the way ICE
will swing back by our planet Earth in the year 2012 -- by then it
should still be covered with comet dust -- and we can recover it in
space -- to get a sample of a comet!


Script by Diana Hadley and Deborah Byrd.


(c) Copyright 1983, 1984 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin