NASA to make harpoon capable of taking samples from comets

PanARMENIAN.Net - NASA is developing a harpoon capable of taking samples from comets.

The space agency has already built a prototype capable of launching test harpoon tips across a distance of a mile (1.6km). The engineers believe it would be safer to collect comet material using the equipment rather than trying to land on the celestial bodies.

NASA said that the samples could reveal the origins of the planets and how life was created on Earth.

Comets are made up of frozen chunks of ice, gas and dust. They orbit the sun and, if they are close enough to the star, project a tail in the opposite direction made up of ionized gases.

Particle samples recovered by NASA's Stardust mission in 2002 were found to include an amino acid, glycine, which is used by living organisms to create proteins. The agency said the discovery supported the theory that some of life's ingredients had formed in space and had been delivered to Earth by meteorite and comet impacts.

To gather more material, the agency is developing a sample-collecting space harpoon which could be projected "with surgical precision" from a spacecraft hovering above the target. Experts said this would avoid the risk of trying to anchor the craft to a comet's rugged surface.

Engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, have built a trial harpoon that is 6ft (183cm) tall. The bow is made out of a pair of springs normally used to provide the suspension for trucks. The bow string is made out of steel cable half an inch thick.

It can fire projectiles at speeds of more than 100ft per second. Test projectiles are fired into large drums filled with sand, rock salt, ice or pebbles.

Data collected from the experiments will be used to determine which design and explosive powder charge should be used on the mission. The scientists are also developing a hollow harpoon tip to contain a sample chamber in which the gathered material would be stored, BBC reported.