If matches are found, then identification of the material inside the comet would be accomplished.
The nation that hits the comet, at a distance of 37m miles, will gain new respect worldwide.
The comet gets compressed and then explodes in the solar atmosphere which, in turn, creates shockwaves, says Eichler.
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Protection from such danger is by itself worth the vast resources which a nuclear strike against the comet will require.
So when one comes in here--I mean, the big effort on this was having the comet come in to meet us.
The moment that this happens, and for a few minutes afterwards, the comet may brighten, and it may even brighten considerably.
Stardust was commanded to take more than 70 high-resolution pictures, and the dust analysis instruments investigated the environment around the comet.
All staff and patients at Crawley Hospital were safely evacuated after the fire in a store room on the Comet ward.
Though meteors from Halley's Comet can be seen at this time of year, he said it did not come from the comet.
Brian Karczewski, 24, got a great shot of the comet from a California church parking lot and submitted an iReport about it.
Principal investigator Joe Veverka from Cornell University said the alterations were driven by the process material loss as the comet orbited the Sun.
That's bad news for the comet, but it could be a boon for sky watchers if the comet is brighter and easier to see.
He said Icetech had been facing two challenges - competition from cheaper Chinese imports and last year's collapse of the Comet electrical goods chain.
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No special equipment was required to watch the shower, which occurs when Earth passes through a stream of dusty debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle.
On Tuesday all staff and patients at Crawley Hospital had to be evacuated after the fire in a store room on the Comet ward.
The comet is already visible through telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere, and it should swing into view over the Northern Hemisphere beginning around March 8.
For Dr Strangeloves, the comet-stopping mission will provide real star-wars experience.
"I took that image from my house in Tucson, and I was hoping to show that anyone, even from the city, can potentially see the comet!"
The comet, discovered by Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok and named for their institution, the International Scientific Optical Network, is still distant: 793 million kilometres away.
In addition to taking normal images of the impact in the visible spectrum, the HRI provides an infrared "fingerprint" of the material from inside the comet's nucleus.
Some of the comet particles would be almost millimeter size.
On the main side, the front side of our ice cube tray, if you will, we exposed that when we flew past the comet, so we caught the comet dust.
"At very low angles, we think that some water-ice from the comet would remain intact as a liquid puddle concentrated with organic molecules, ideal for the development of life, " Blank said.
"When they come close to the Sun, this ice melts - solar wind blows this material out into space, so you get a tail of matter coming off the comet, " explains O'Brien.
It opened its first store in 1968, in Hull, and was bought by Kingfisher in 1984, which expanded the Comet brand into one of the most familiar names on the High Street.
The idea is to create an impressive extraterrestrial firework display to celebrate the success of the American rebellion while at the same time allowing the mother-ship to record what is inside the comet.
During the Annefrank flyby, Stardust will run through the exact sequence planned for the comet encounter, with science instruments all running and relaying data at high speeds for the first time since the space probe's launch.
Cheng says the comet is likely making its first visit to the inner solar system from the Oort cloud, a reservoir of hundreds of millions of comets encircling our solar system at a distance of about a light year.
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It did a very close encounter with Jupiter in 1974, similar to the comet, you know, that crashed into Jupiter that dramatically changes orbit to an orbit that now it goes through orbit of Mars, through orbit of Jupiter.
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