My name, along with another 625,000 people’s names will be part of the July 3-4 fireworks when
Deep Impact impactor spacecraft collides with
Comet Tempel 1.
When Deep Impact was in its final stages of development, organizers in NASA's Education and Public Outreach program created the
Send Your Name to a Comet campaign.
The Internet-based effort allowed participants to sign their name up for destruction and print out an official certificate documenting their place on the list.
"
We thought it would be fun for people to say their name was on the impactor that collided with the comet. We thought it would let them feel like they were part of the mission." - Maura Roundtree-Brown, organizer.
People could submit their names between May 2003 and January 2004.
Once registration closed, the list was burned onto a mini-CD and attached to the spacecraft -- tucked under the thermal blanketing...to keep it safe until it vaporises during this holiday weekend when the impactor and comet slam together at 37,000 Km/h.
"
It will be vaporized along with the impactor"
Though, NASA will have to wait until Monday to see if they hit the mark with their impactor...
The nominal impact time is July 04 05:52:00 UTC, +/- 3 minutes, Earth received time.
The actual impact should occur about 07:15 minutes earlier due to the light time delay.
Current orbit solutions using astrometry determination from last night, says that impact will occur about 15 Seconds late. (The 1-sigma uncertainty is around 12 seconds)
The best Earth view will be over Hawaii…but a huge cloud may emerge that may brighten the comet for several hours…so that it’ll be visible through binoculars…
My official certificate :-)
