FOR RELEASE: Oct. 21, 1997
Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander, Jr.
Office: (607) 255-3290
Internet: [email protected]
Compuserve: Bill Steele, 72650,565
http://www.news.cornell.edu
ITHACA, N.Y. -- NASA awarded a $154 million grant to
Cornell University to lead and direct close-proximity comet fly-bys
scheduled for launch early in the next century. Cornell's award was the
largest single mission grant in the school's 129-year history.
The Comet Nucleus Tour mission -- nicknamed Contour -- will be led by
Joseph Veverka, Cornell professor of astronomy. The unmanned mission will
take images and comparative spectral maps of at least three comet nuclei
and analyze the dust and gas flowing from them. The mission's goals are to
dramatically improve knowledge of the key characteristics of comet nuclei
and to assess their diversity.
NASA said the mission is scheduled for launch in July 2002 -- aboard a
Delta rocket -- with its first comet fly-by to occur in November 2003. The
Contour spacecraft will be outfitted with a solar array for power and a
high-gain antenna for communication with Earth. The Contour spacecraft,
which will be built by the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins
University, Baltimore, will venture about 30 million miles from Earth to
study the comets.
As principal investigator, Veverka said Contour's initial fly-by will visit
Comet Encke in 2003 at a distance of about 60 miles, and will be followed
by similar encounters with Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann-3 in June 2006 and
Comet d'Arrest in August 2008.
"We think that there are millions of comets inhabiting the environs of the
solar system, and studying the composition of comets will tell us
something about the beginnings of the solar system," said Yervant Terzian,
the James A. Weeks Professor of Physical Sciences and chair of Cornell's
Department of Astronomy.
"The Contour project led by Cornell will be one of the first important
space missions launched in the next century," said Cornell President Hunter
Rawlings. "I congratulate Joe Veverka and his science team as they embark
on this exciting intellectual enterprise."
Joining Veverka on Cornell's mission team are Steven W. Squyres, Cornell
professor of astronomy; and James Bell and Peter C. Thomas, Cornell senior
research associates in the Astronomy Department's Center for Radiophysics
and Space Research.
While Cornell University has received larger amounts of funding for direct
projects such as the Arecibo telescope facility in Puerto Rico and the
Cornell Theory Center in Ithaca, this grant was the largest for a single
mission, according to Jack Lowe, Cornell associate vice president of
research and director of Cornell Sponsored Programs.
NASA today also awarded $216 million to the California Institute of
Technology for the Genesis mission, which will be launched in January 2001,
to collect samples of charged particles for study of the solar wind.
The two awards today were among 34 proposals originally submitted to NASA
in December 1996 and are part of NASA's Discovery Program, which deliver
extensive scientific research for lower costs.
Contour and Genesis follow four previously selected NASA Discovery
missions. The Mars Pathfinder lander, carrying the rover Sojourner, landed
successfully July 4 on Mars and returned spectacular images and information
on the Martian environment. The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR)
returned sharp images of the asteroid Mathilde in June of this year.
NASA's Lunar Prospector orbiter mission to map the Moon's composition and
gravity field is scheduled for launch next January and the Stardust mission
is scheduled for a February 1999 launch to gather dust from Comet Wild-2 in
2004 and return it to Earth.
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