杏吧原创

NASA鈥檚 Deep Space 1 probe flew past Comet Borrelly on Saturday. It plunged
into the 50,000-kilometre-wide cloud of dust and gas surrounding the comet at
16.5 kilometres per second. During the fly-by, Deep Space 1 analysed energetic
ions around the comet and gathered information on the comet鈥檚 composition. The
probe took close-up snaps of the comet鈥檚 nucleus from around 2200 kilometres
away. 鈥淭his just worked perfectly,鈥� says NASA鈥檚 Marc Rayman, the craft鈥檚 project
manager. 鈥淚 honestly didn鈥檛 think it was up to the task.鈥�