19-01-12 NASA Satellite Witnesses a Comet's Plunge into the SunA sun-watching spacecraft has for the first time tracked a comets path all the way into the solar atmosphere.As dramatic exits go,its on par with Major T. J. "King" Kong riding a falling nuclear bomb like a rodeo bull at the end of Dr. Strangelove.A NASA spacecraft has documented a comets demise as it plunged toward the sun at 600 kilometers per second,broke apart and vaporized inside the solar atmosphere.The comet,known as C/2011 N3 (SOHO),met its fiery fate on July 6.The objects official name designates that it was discovered in early July 2011 by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft.Many comets meet a similar end,but astronomers and solar physicists have never been able to track a comets trajectory all the way into the depths of the solar corona,the outermost layer of the suns atmosphere.With the help of another spacecraft NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory(SDO),which was launched in 2010a group of scientists were able to witness the final minutes of the comets existence. |
