[FPSPACE] Higher res images of comet available

[paolo.ulivi at tiscali.it]

> Having spent a few postgrad years at the UofAZ Lunar and Planetary 
> Laboratory trying to figure out what things were made out of based on 
> reflection spectroscopy from afar, I would encourage everybody with a modest

> budget and an aspiration to make a contribution to understanding the solar

> system to fly smallish missions to asteroids,  comets etc.
>
> Orbiters would be best, landers would be desirable; but as we've seen,
even 
> fly-bys reveal a lot of interesting stuff.

In my opinion, it is time for the space agencies to start planning a flyby
mission to the "holy grail" of cometary astronomy: a long period comet, which
would provide an important comparison to understand the evolution of cometary
nuclei.
European space agency ESRO had studied a long period comet flyby during the
1960s and such a concept has resurfaced from time to time. Had CONTOUR succeeded,
it would have been possible to use it to intercept one.
I think that the time is ripe now to mount such a mission. Automated surveys
are discovering comets by the dozens every year, so that at least one target
every year could be found. Moreover, there is no shortage of launchers that
could be kept on stand-by and could be launched within a few weeks of the
discovery of a suitable target (I am thinking about Dnepr).
Paolo

P.S. for the ESRO cometary probe stay tuned for my paper "ESRO and the deep
space" due to be published in the BIS' "Space Chronicle"

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