Mars orbiter is 'set to find Beagle'

Amazing new close-ups of Mars have, for the first time, revealed the landing site of a Nasa probe. The detailed photos, from an orbiting spacecraft, give hope that the fate of the UK's Beagle 2 mission will finally soon be solved. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter turned its high-resolution eye on the spot where America's Opportunity rover bounced to a landing in January 2004. The HiRise images show the airbag-cushioned lander sitting slap in the middle of an impact site called Eagle crater. Nearby lies the trailing parachute that carried Opportunity safely down, together with broken remnants of its heat shield that protected it when it hit the martian atmosphere. A small, new crater marks the point where the shield hit Mars. Since landing, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has been trundling about the Meridiani Planum region. It was pictured itself by HiRise last month perched on the edge of the giant Victoria Crater. Professor Colin Pillinger is looking forward to the orbiter snapping his own Beagle 2 which is believed to have crashed on Mars on Christmas Day, 2003. Last December, the Open University scientist announced that he thought a blurry enhancement of a photo from another orbiting probe, Mars Global Surveyor, showed Beagle lying in a 20 yard wide crater. But other scientists have been skeptical about that inetrpretation. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is likely to settle the question for good because it is imaging Mars in incredible detail. Professor Pillinger told Skymania News yesterday: "When you look at the pictures being sent back by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the detail is incredible. You can almost read the name on the side of the craft. "I'm in touch with the Nasa team and I know that that looking for Beagle is on their agenda. I have high hopes that we will soon see it confirmed that it is sitting in that crater on Mars." Over the next couple of weeks, MRO, flying between 155 and 196 miles above the Red Planet, will attempt to photograph other probes' landing or crash sites. Professor Alfred McEwen, of the University of Arizona, who leads the HiRise camera team, said they will target "all the easy-to-find hardware on Mars" over the next couple of weeks. That will include Opportunity's sister rover Spirit, the Viking 1 and Viking 2 landers, which have sat on the planet since 1976, and Mars Pathfinder, which touched down in 1998. You can view the HiRise images of the Opportunity lander here. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Fly me into space, says Hawking

Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson promised yesterday to help top scientist Professor Stephen Hawking achieve his dream and fly into space. He spoke after the wheelchair-bound genius ended a BBC radio interview by calling on Virgin Galactic to help him get there. Virgin were clearly taken by surprise by the broadcast and spent the next few hours scrabbling around as they decided how to respond. But eventually, Sir Richard announced: "Obviously we would be honoured to have Stephen fly with Virgin Galactic. "We have a great medical team and we are planning to have our Chief Medical Officer sit down with Stephen and we will do everything in our power to make his dream of going to space possible. "But at the end of the day it will be Stephen's decision and it goes without saying we would be delighted to have him on board". Professor Hawking had told the BBC that his next goal was to fly into space and said: "Maybe Richard Branson will help me." Branson's company Virgin Galactic is aiming to fly its first commercial passengers on sub-orbital trips into space aboard Spaceshiptwo within two years. Hawking, who is confined to a Dalek-like chair with motor neurone disease, said his illness had taught him not to look too far ahead but to concentrate on the present. He said: "I am not afraid of death but I am in no hurry to die. "I have so much I still want to do. My next goal is to go into space. Maybe Richard Branson will help me." Earlier in the interview by John Humphries, Professor Hawking said that moving out into space was vital to save mankind. He said: "The long term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet. Sooner or later disasters such as an asteroid collision or a nuclear war could wipe us all out. "But once we apread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe. There isn't anywhere like the Earth in the solar system. For that we have to go to another star." He said rockets could be developed that brought matter and anti-matter together. They would annihalate each other in a flash of radiation. "If this radiation were beamed out the back of a spaceship it would act like a rocket and could drive the spaceship nearly to the speed of light. "With that it would be possible to reach the nearest star in six years, although it wouldn't seem to long for those on board." ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

China plans giant radio telescope

China has confirmed that it is to build the world's biggest single ear on the universe. The 500-metre wide radio telescope dish is expected to make thousands of discoveries of fast-spinning "lighthouses" in the universe called pulsars. Officials at the Chinese Academy of Sciences say the telescope, to be built in a valley in Guizhou Province in the south-west of the country, will cover an area the size of 25 football fields. It will be ten times more powerful than the current biggest steerable radio dish in the world. Astronomers have so far discovered 1,760 pulsars - collapsed neutron stars left by exploding supernovae. The new radio telescope, called Fast, is predicted to find 7,000 to 10,000 more a year. The telescope could also be used to monitor satellites and space debris to aid China's growing space programme. The telescope is likely to resemble the famous 305-metre wide Arecibo dish which sits in a valley in Puerto Rico. Ironically, funding for that US observatory is currently under threat. Photo: Arecibo Observatory. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Piers calls for more Brits in space

British space hero Piers Sellers has called on the UK to provide astronauts for the International Space Station. Answering a question from Skymania News, Nasa veteran Piers indicated that he would like to see the Government reverse its opposition to human spaceflight. Piers, who has twice flown on the space shuttle, most recently aboard Discovery in July, was talking in London after addressing a meeting of young scientist students from local schools. He told the meeting, organised by the British Interplanetary Society, that he wanted to see many of today's schoolchildren grow up to be astronauts too. But I pointed out that Piers, from Crowborough, East Sussex, had to emigrate to the USA to follow his space dream, just like fellow Brits Michael Foale and Nicholas Patrick, who makes his first launch next month. Piers, who has carried out six spacewalks to help build the International Space Station, replied: "There are many countries involved in the space station - the US, Russia, Canada, European countries, Japan. "I'm hoping that one day Britain will join in. It's really up to British taxpayers and the Department of Science but I really hope that one day Britain will be there too." Climate expert Piers, 51, who studied and universities at Edinburgh and Leeds, added: "You have to sit down and take a long hard look at the benefits and costs of human spaceflight. I think you'll find that all countries that have been involved are glad they're in there, they're happy to be in there. "Don't forget that all the millions of dollars that get spent, they get spent here on technical jobs and can have significant benefit for the British national interest. "It's not like you are taking the money and just throwing it into space. Every pound that gets spent is spent on jobs in British technology and science." The photo, showing me with Piers, was taken by Robin Scagell, of Galaxy Picture Library. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Spy in sky reveals typhoon disaster

A British spy satellite has revealed the extent of a major disaster in North Korea that was covered up by its Communist rulers. Pictures released today show that at least ten thousand people died when the country was struck by a super typhoon called Bilis. The North Korean government's official figures claimed that 549 people died and 295 were missing following the disaster in July. But experts at Durham University say the death toll is likely to have been well over 10,000 people and possibly considerably more. They reached their conclusions after studying photos from a micro-satellite called TopSat, launched last year to provide images of the Earth and to assist in disaster monitoring. I have already written on how the satellite, designed and built in Surrey, won a top award. Professor Dave Petley, of Durham’s International Landslide Centre, commissioned the images after organisations in South Korea expressed their concerns about the typhoon's true impact. They examined detailed before and after images of the town Yangdok in North Korea in order to determine the huge storm's actual impact. The images reveal clear evidence of devastating floods and landslides which ripped through the communities in the middle of the night. Rivers overflowed their banks, sweeping away bridges and apartment blocks. In just one small community on the outskirts of Yangdok, at least 27 large apartment blocks were destroyed or seriously damaged. The scientists say there is also evidence of severe damage to infrastructure, including washed out bridges, destroyed roads and railway lines and complete infilling of reservoirs. Agricultural land was badly damaged which will seriously affect food production in a country where so many are already starving. Professor Petley said: “It is clear that the level of damage is extremely high. The flood is believed to have happened in the middle of the night, when many of the inhabitants in the mainly residential buildings were sleeping. "It is likely that the death toll associated with these floods would have been very high, probably well over 10,000 rather than the official figure of 549. Certainly Typhoon Bilis resulted in a disaster on an epic scale in North Korea.” Photo courtesy of the TopSat Consortium, copyright QinetiQ. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Today's the day for space golf

A Russian cosmonaut will make the longest golf drive in history today when he tees off in space. Mikhail Tyurin will hit up to three golf balls during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Wednesday. Because his spacesuit is so bulky he will have to make his swing one-handed for the first Interstellar Open, 220 miles above the Earth. The special gold-plated balls are expected to fly into orbit for up to three days before they fall into the atmophere and burn up as an unusual meteor shower. Tyurin, 46, was coached by two of the world's leading experts, Rick Martino and Carol Mann, before he began his tour of duty in space. He will use a specially-made, lightweight six-iron in the stunt which the Russian space agency agreed with Canadian golf company Element 21 which is launching new lightweight clubs. Regular readers will recall, I first wrote about this stunt way back in February. At that time, a member of the last ISS crew, Pavel Vinogradov, was scheduled to perform it. Nasa were worried at first about the stunt but safety officials have been assured there is no danger of the space station being hit. Tyurin will hit the balls away from the orbiting outpost as he and Nasa colleague Mike Lopez-Alegria begin a six-hour spacewalk. Instead of a normal tee, the ball will sit in a wire nest to stop it drifting away. Lopex-Alegria may have to hold his colleague's legs to stop him from floating off too. The shot will not be the first extra-terrestrial game of golf. In 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Shepard ended a Moon walk by driving two balls for hundreds of yards across the lunar surface. You can watch a video of that historic moment here. The picture is a grab from that video and shows Shepard taking a swing. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Fourth Brit is set for space

Britain's newest astronaut is preparing for his first flight into orbit next month aboard the space shuttle. Rookie Nicholas Patrick will blast off aboard the Discovery on Nasa's latest mission to the International Space Station. Married Nicholas, 42, pictured here, will become only the fourth Brit to rocket into space, following in the steps of Helen Sharman, Michael Foale and Piers Sellers. Lift-off is scheduled for December 7 when Nicholas will begin a 12-day mission with his six crewmates to the orbiting outpost. Just like shuttle veterans Mike and Piers, Nicholas had to emigrate to the USA to pursue his dream of flying in space. Nicholas was born in the seaside town of Saltburn, North Yorks, to parents Stewart and Gillian. It was there that he was inspired to go into space himself after watching the first men walking on the Moon as a child. He said in a Nasa pre-mission interview: "When I was five, I saw the Apollo 11 moon landing, and that really, really caught my imagination. I remember exactly where I was, watching it with my parents. And from that point on, I decided I wanted to be an astronaut. "That’s the one interest that’s really stuck with me through my childhood and through my subsequent education and career." Nicholas added: "I was amazed that anybody could be that far away, wondering whether they’d all come back safely. And maybe this meant that we would all be going to the Moon someday soon, and I wanted to be a part of that." Nicholas moved from Yorkshire to London and was educated at top public school Harrow before studying a degree in engineering at Trinity College, Cambridge. He learned to fly with the university's RAF squadron. But after graduating, he moved to the States and worked for aerospace company Boeing designing rocket engines before being spotted by Nasa and beginning astronaut training in 1998. His training has included long spells living and working underwater off the Florida Keys - an environment that simulates space. Nicholas's main task aboard shuttle mission STS-116 will be to operate the robotic controls. He will help pull a giant truss out of the ship's payload bay and use a long robot arm to manouevre it so that spacewalking colleagues can install it. The mission is the most complex that Nasa has ever attempted and will include a rewiring of the station's electricity supply. Nicholas, whose expertise was used to redesign part of the shuttle's control panel, relaxes by playing squash and shooting. Photo: Nasa. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Manned mission to an asteroid

Nasa is planning a manned mission to an asteroid in a real life version of the Hollywood movie Armageddon. They are considering sending astronauts aboard a new spacecraft currently being designed to fly to the Moon. But unlike Bruce Willis, they won't be on a desperate bid to save the world. Experts say the spacemen will rendezvous with one of the so-called Near Earth Objects - asteroids which threaten us over the long term because their orbits cross our own. The mission will help astronauts adapt to lengthy spaceflights and to master techniques to deal with any killer asteroids which may one day be found to be on course for impact. The flight, which could last up to 90 days, looks set to happen before Nasa crews return to the lunar surface in 2018. The space agency is currently working on building a set of rocket hardware called Constellation to fulfil President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration. It includes a modern version of the old Apollo command capsule called Orion to ferry the astronauts through space. Astronauts, engineers and scientists at Nasa's Johnson Space Centre at Houston, Texas, are evaluating the asteroid mission, according to the website Space.com. Constellation scientist Chris McKay tells the site: "A human mission to a Near Earth Asteroid would be scientifically worthwhile. It could be part of an overall program of understanding these objects and the threat they pose to the Earth." He adds: "The public wants us to have mastered the problem of dealing with asteroids. So being able to have astronauts go out there and sort of poke one with a stick would be scientifically valuable as well as demonstrate human capabilities." Former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who campaigns for more action to be taken to deal with the asteroid threat, adds: "It's a terrific mission if we can do it." No target has yet been picked for the manned mission. More than 800 asteroids are already known that come close enough to us in their orbits to pose an impact threat. The picture is a montage by Skymania from Nasa images. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Meet the new star neighbours

Astronomers have discovered 20 previously unknown stars lying right on our cosmic doorstep. The new neighbours are all close to the sun but went unnoticed before because they are fainter than normal stars. They are all a type known as a red dwarf which is believed to account for at least 69 per cent of the stars in the Milky Way. The astronomers say they will make excellent targets to study to check if they have new planets, possibly supporting life. All the new stars lie within 33 light-years of Earth - a highly local region of our 100,000 light-year wide galaxy. Two of them become the twenty-third and twenty-fourth closest stars known. The 20 new neighbours were discovered by a group using small telescopes on a mountaintop in Chile. Details of the find will be published in next month's Astronomical Journal. The astronomers, from the Research Consortium on Nearby Stars, have been searching the skies from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in the Andes since 1999. Once the new stars were found, their distances were checked using trigonometry by observing them six months apart from opposite sides of our orbit around the Sun. Project Director Todd Henry of Georgia State University, Atlanta, said yesterday: "Our goal is to help complete the census of our local neighbourhood and provide some statistical insights about the demographics of stars in our galaxy - their masses, their evolutionary states, and the frequency of multiple star systems. "Due to their proximity, these systems are also excellent targets for exoplanet searches, and ultimately, for astrobiological studies of whether any planets that are found could support life." He added: "Red dwarfs are among the faintest but most populous objects in the Milky Way. Although you can't see a single one with the naked eye, there are swarms of them throughout the galaxy." Red dwarfs now make up 239 of the 348 known objects within 33 light-years. When you add in other stars found since 2000, it means the local neighbourhood has got 16 per cent bigger in just six years. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Bid to mend link with Mars probe

Nasa scientists were yesterday trying to regain contact with a space probe around Mars. The space agency lost touch with Mars Global Surveyor as they were celebrating ten years since it was launched. For nearly a decade it has carried out a detailed examination of Mars, operating longer than any other probe sent there. The mission was initially scheduled to last just one year. Problems began earlier this month when the unmanned spacecraft reported problems turning one of its solar panels. Automatic software on board immediately switched to a back-up system. A brief signal received on November 5 indicated that the probe had gone into a safe mode and was awaiting fresh instructions from Earth. Since then they have been unable to establish any form of contact with it but engineers have not given up hope. Project manager Tom Thorpe, of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said: "The spacecraft has many redundant systems that should help us get it back into a stable operation. But first we need to re-establish communications." One option that Nasa is considering is to try to photograph the stricken probe from another craft, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, when it flies past it at a distance of around 60 miles this week. Mars Global Surveyor began its mission to the Red Planet on November 7, 1996. Its achievements include the discovery of many young gullies apparently cut by flowing water and water-related mineral deposits. Picture: Nasa. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Monster storm is raging on Saturn

A Nasa spaceprobe has spotted a monster hurricane two-thirds the diameter of Earth raging on the planet Saturn. Just like our hurricanes, the giant storm has a well-developed eye and is ringed by towering clouds. But scientists are baffled because it is not behaving like a hurricane should. The Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around ringed planet Saturn, recorded a three-hour movie of the storm's winds blowing clockwise at 350mph. The hurricane, 5,000 miles wide, lies at the planet's South Pole. Clouds spiralling from its central ring are up to five times higher than those from similar storms on Earth. Saturn's hurricane is different from terrestrial storms because it is locked to the pole instead of drifting around. It has also formed without an ocean beneath it because Saturn is a gas world. On Earth the walls of cloud form when moist air rises from the sea. Andrew Ingersoll, of Cassini's imaging team at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, said: "It looks like a hurricane, but it doesn't behave like a hurricane. Whatever it is, we're going to focus on the eye of this storm and find out why it's there." The space scientists hope that peering into the eye of the hurricane will allow them to see deeper into cloud-shrouded Saturn than ever before. The distant world, second biggest planet in the solar system, lies around a billion miles from Earth. Photo: Nasa. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Cosmic cradle is a blaze of colour

Two space telescopes have combined to produce this stunning photo of chaos in a celestial nursery. Nasa's Hubble and Spitzer observatories zoomed in on the Orion nebula, a cloud of gas bright enough to be seen with the naked eye on winter nights. Their survey of the region, a cosmic cradle where hundreds of stars are being born, reveals colourful wisps of gas and dust blown by the stellar winds. This vast star factory lies nearly 1,500 light-years from the Earth in the sword of Orion the mythical hunter. The space telescopes have painted it like an explosion of colours from right across the spectrum. Four brilliant stars known as the Trapezium and around 100,000 times brighter than the sun, dominate the centre of the nebula in a yellow smudge. The wisps of green are hydrogen and sulphur heated by those giant stars' intense ultraviolet radiation. Red and orange swirls are made up of carbon-rich molecules similar to those found on burnt toast! Hundreds of stars are scattered throughout the nebula. Spitzer, a heat-seeking telescope, revealed the youngest as orange-yellow dots embedded in the dust and gas. The picture was built up from images taken over many months by the two telescopes. One thing it clearly shows is that a celestial nursery is as untidy as kiddies' toyroom. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Killer flare spotted on nearby star

Astronomers have observed an explosion on a nearby star equal to 50 million trillion atomic bombs. The flare was so powerful that if it had happened on our own sun it would have wiped out life on Earth in a mass extinction. It happened on a star called 11 Pegasi which lies about 135 light-years away, on our doorstep in cosmic terms. It is in orbit around another star. The monster flare, which was spotted by Nasa's Swift satellite, is believed to be the most powerful magnetic explosion detected on a star. The observation was reported on Tuesday at a conference in Pasadena, California, but was made last December. Nasa say the flare was about 100 million times more energetic than a typical flare on our own sun, such as that in our Nasa photo, which is too stable to produce anything so powerful. They add that 11 Pegasi, which is slightly less massive than the sun, is at a safe distance and so does not threaten life on Earth. Scientists say the obsrvation has shown that flares on other stars involve particle acceleration just like on the sun. Solar flares originate in the sun's corona, the outermost part of the sun's atmosphere, as a burst of radiation. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

UK's TopSat wins a science 'Oscar'

A British-built spy in the sky has won top space award in a US science equivalent of the Oscars. TopSat, which is producing high-resolution images of the Earth's surface, was named Aviation and Space Grand Award Winner at a ceremony in New York on Monday night. The accolade was one of the 2006 Best of What’s New Awards made by Popular Science magazine. It recognises the micro-satellite's potential to change space reconnaissance technology. TopSat, which was launched in October last year from Northern Russia, was designed and built by Surrey Satellite Technology, of Guildford, for a consortium led by QinetiQ of Farnborough, Surrey. It was funded by the MoD and British National Space Centre and is designed to help discover minerals and oil as well as aid relief teams at disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The micro-satellite is seen as revolutionary because it is the size of a small washing machine, weighing just 264 lb (120kg) and cost less than £14 million - cheap in space terms. Mark Jannot, editor of Popular Science, said his team had sifted through thousands of entries before picking TopSat as winner. He added: “These awards honour innovations that not only influence the way we live today, but that change the way we think about the future.” The photo is an early TopSat image of the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge at Dartford, Kent. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Titan's orange haze is a clue to life

Scientists have detected the first possible signs of life forming on another world and gained clues to our own origins. An organic haze surrounding Saturn's moon Titan is similar to that thought to have helped nourish life on Earth billions of years ago, they said this week. British experts led the successful landing of an unmanned spaceprobe, Huygens, on Titan in January last year after a 2.5 billion mile journey. It is the only moon with a dense atmosphere and has since been found to have rivers and lakes. Huygens detected organic chemicals that are the building blocks of life, including nitrogen and methane, as it parachuted to a slushy landing. Now scientists at Nasa's Astrobiology Institute have simulated and compared the atmospheres of early Earth and 3,200-mile diameter Titan in the laboratory. Their study appears in the latest Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. The researchers, led by Melissa Trainer, say their experiments help scientists interpret observations of Titan's atmosphere from Huygens and its mothership Cassini which is still orbiting Saturn. But it also shows how a major source of organics could have been produced on Earth billions of years ago. Carl Pilcher, director of the Nasa Astrobiology Institute, at the Ames Research Center, California, said: "It's exciting to see that the early Earth experiments produced so much organic matter." The scientists say that when sunlight hits an atmosphere of methane and nitrogen, like the atmosphere of Titan today, aerosol particles form. When an atmosphere also contains carbon dioxide, as in the atmosphere of ancient Earth, different kinds of particles form. They compare the process to the build-up of city smog. Chief UK Huygens mission scientist Professor Zarnecki, of the Open University, says air samples taken by the probe are of "great astrobiological interest". He told me: "We believe the chemistry is there for life to form." The photo from Cassini, showing a smog-enshrouded Titan, was taken in February 2005. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Sir Patrick's stamp of approval

The Royal Mail is to celebrate 50 years of TV's The Sky At Night with a special set of stamps. Six stamps will be issued in February 2007 showing spectacular pictures from the Hubble space telescope overlain with constellation patterns. When Patrick Moore presented the first Sky At Night in April 1957, the show was expected to last three months. Sir Patrick, 84, told me yesterday: "I like the stamps and feel very honoured. The Sky At Night is the longest-running running TV programme in the world with the same presenter and I don't think our record is ever likely to be beaten." The six stamps - two first class, two at 50p and two at 72p - were designed by Dick Davies. They show five colourful gas clouds, or nebulae, and one distant galaxy." In another tribute to Sir Patrick, they also refer to his own Caldwell Catalogue by including its numbers for those fuzzy objects in the sky that Charles Messier overlooked. In case you were wondering, the catalogue's title comes from the a part of Patrick's name which he dropped - he is in fact Sir Patrick Caldwell-Moore. ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com

Deep Impact will fly to new comet

A space probe that attacked a comet with a missile last year is to hunt down a second target, Nasa has revealed. Deep Impact blasted a crater the size of Wembley Stadium out of Comet Tempel 1 with an 820 lb smart bomb. The explosion, with the force of 4.5 tons of TNT, was so spectacular that it blinded cameras that tried to peer into the crater for evidence of how the solar system formed. However, much valuable data was recorded from the impact, 83 million miles away in space. Now Nasa are backing a proposal to send Deep Impact to visit another celestial wanderer, Comet Boethin. But this time the $380 million, unmanned probe will come in peace rather than launch a war of the worlds - because it doesn't have another missile anyway. Instead it will fly past the comet in December 2008 to examine its surface and find out what it is made of. Nasa call the proposal a "mission of opportunity" because it was not planned when Deep Impact was launched from Florida in January 2005. Scientists are also suggesting that the probe's high-resolution camera is used to search for Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars. Deep Impact team leader Michael A'Hearn, of the University of Maryland, said: "Deep Impact's flyby spacecraft and payload are still healthy. We propose to direct the spacecraft for a flyby of Comet Boethin to investigate whether the results found at Comet Tempel 1 are unique or are also found on other comets." He said Deep Impact would send back half as much information as from Tempel 1 but at just a tenth the cost. Jessica Sunshine, a member of the Deep Impact science team, said: "Data from comets can help us to better understand the origin of the solar system, as well as what role, if any, comets may have played in the emergence of life on Earth. However, we first must know which cometary characteristics are due to evolution and which are primordial." ©PAUL SUTHERLAND, SpaceStories.com