The idea of the harpoon builds off of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission, which has a harpoon but no sample collecting capability. United States Space Agency (NASA) are designing a harpoon to shoot a comet. Scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center now houses a monstrous six-foot-long crossbow, with a bow made from a pair of truck carriage springs, and a string made from a half-inch-thick steel cable. This industrial-strength ballista can generate a level of force up to 1,000 pounds. Future spaceships will ideally have multiple harpoons, which will be designed to handle different types of comet material.
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| NASA Comet Sample Ballista Harpoon. (Picture from: http://www.wired.com/) |
The engineers only point the bow towards the floor, for safety reasons. “It could potentially launch test harpoon tips about a mile if it was angled upwards,” said NASA’s Bill Steigerwald in a press release.
The engineers are also building a special arrow, with a collection chamber secreted away inside a hollow tip. “It has to remain reliably open as the tip penetrates the comet’s surface, but then it has to close tightly and detach from the tip so the sample can be pulled back into the spacecraft,” explains Donald Wegel, lead engineer on the project.
Samples of comet material deemed held clues about the origin of planets and life, since comets contain frozen dust and ice that come from the formation of our solar system. "The reason that most stirs the spirit to take all the trouble is costing is to get a chance look in the comet's primordial biomolecules that may have helped generate life," he said.
During tests, the harpoon can penetrate a 250 liter drum of dirt. These are materials you’d likely find on a comet. Things like sand, salt, pebbles or a mixture of the lot. “We’re not sure what we’ll encounter on the comet — the surface could be soft and fluffy, mostly made up of dust, or it could be ice mixed with pebbles, or even solid rock,” says Wegel.
Previous NASA missions have discovered amino acid, a molecule essential for life and act as an element-forming proteins on comets and meteorites. The project is expected to support the theory that comets and meteorites that fell to earth has been supporting the development of life on earth through vital biomolecules carrying.
NASA has already got a mission to return a sample from an asteroid. it’s called Osiris-Rex (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security — Regolith Explorer), it recently won funding and will blast off in 2016. But it will only collect surface material.
The surface of a comet can be altered by the harsh environment of space. So this proposed harpoon system would plug the depths of a comet’s stomach and pull out its secret ingredients — without ever needing to land on the rock or drill down into its crust.
The engineers will continue their proof-of-concept work in the lab, and then apply for funding to develop an actual instrument.
Another goal of collecting samples of this comet is knowing how comets are formed. Such information will provide valuable information for researchers on how best to deflect any celestial body that leads to a dangerous world. *** [SPACE | WIRED.COM | KORAN TEMPO 3740]
