Sentences with phrase «comet nucleus»

Moreover, this material is then ejected and hardly contributes to the formation of the smaller bodies that form a new generation of comet nuclei.

In the computer simulations, the research team investigated what happened after two large comet nuclei violently collided together.

The researchers mapped the surface of the 4.8 - kilometer - wide comet nucleus, whose oblate shape resembles a homemade hamburger patty.

Although fragile comet nuclei have been seen to fall apart as they approach the Sun, nothing like the breakup of this asteroid, P / 2013 R3, has ever been observed before in the asteroid belt.

A strike by a large asteroid or small comet nucleus (1 kilometer or greater) is but one of several kinds of independent high energy events that could destroy humanity and probably a significant number of other species as well.

«There might be more complex mixtures [of amino acids] and higher levels of them in a comet nucleus,» she told New Scientist.

«The hazard is not an impact of the comet nucleus itself, but the trail of debris coming from it.

«These pictures have told us that comet nuclei are far more complex than we ever imagined,» says Laurence Soderblom of the U.S. Geological Survey, leader of the probe's imaging team.

Nicolas Thomas of the Physics Institute of the University of Bern is leading another paper dealing with the pictures of the comet nucleus taken by Rosetta's primary camera system OSIRIS.

Since the comet nucleus is very small, at a diameter of 4 kilometres, the summer zone is only about one kilometre away from the winter zone.

Or perhaps the comet nucleus itself is inhomogeneous.

The Rosetta mission taught us that comet nuclei form by gentle accretion of grains progressively greater in size.

These in turn combine into larger chunks, and so on, until they form a comet nucleus a few kilometers wide.

The final hours of descent will enable Rosetta to make many once - in - a-lifetime measurements, including analysing gas and dust closer to the surface than ever possible before, and taking very high resolution images of the comet nucleus, including the open pits of the Ma'at region where the spacecraft is expected to make its controlled impact.

Project scientists were so unsure of the impact's effects that they had a betting pool as to how large the crater would be — one of the most important indicators of the structure of the comet nucleus.

The pressure at the center of a comet nucleus 3 miles in diameter is about what you would feel under a blanket here on Earth.

Added to this, the MRO discovered that the comet nucleus was smaller than thought with a diameter of only 1.2 miles (2 km) and rotates once every eight hours, and the radar images it took were smeared due to energy levels ten times greater than normal.

When comets venture into the more intense sunlight of the inner solar system, the ices on the comet nucleus begin to melt and fall away.

This 1.25 - mile - or 2 - kilometer - long, «peanut - shaped» comet nucleus was the fifth visited by Human spacecraft, which in this case was NASA's re-purposed Deep Impact probe.

This allowed scientists to study the interior of the comet nucleus.

The most striking feature is a pronounced neck in the comet nucleus, which makes it look a bit like a rubber duck that's gone a few rounds with a terrier.

«Over the next few months, in addition to characterizing the comet nucleus and setting the bar for the rest of the mission, we will begin final preparations for another space history first: landing on a comet,» says Matt Taylor, ESA's Rosetta project scientist.