Sep 22 2010
KinetX, Inc. sponsored a NASA conference which was held at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. in honor of the 25th centenary of the ISEE-3/ICE spacecraft’s interception with the Giacobini-Zinner comet.
This was the first ever encounter of a comet by a spacecraft and it occurred on September 11, 1985, when the Giacobini-Zinner’s path was interrupted by the ISEE-3/ICE spacecraft that was launched for the Sun-Earth libration mission.
Many NASA dignitaries including James Green, Dwayne Brown and Dr Joseph Ververke participated in the conference. Dr. Robert Farquhar of KinetX and Dr. Anita Cochran from McDonald Observatory elucidated on various aspects of cometary science. The missions of NASA’s EPOXI and Stardust-NExT were also discussed in the conference. On November 4, 2010, the EPOXI is likely to intercept with Hartley-2 comet and on February 14, 2011, the Stardust-NExT will encounter the Tempel-1 comet. Dwayne Brown, NASA HQ spokesperson and Kjell Stakkestad, President and CEO of KinetX, offered the concluding speech.
The lectures were telecasted live on NASA TV.
Source: http://www.kinetx.com