Spacecraft Once More Unto the Breach

By Andrew Bridges
space.com - 20 November 2000

PASADENA, Calif. - The annual Leonid meteor shower can be a not-so-gentle reminder of how small cometary particles can cause trouble for Earth-orbiting spacecraft.

But for a small flotilla of missions already or soon under flight, there will be no shying from the peril. Instead, the spacecraft will soon head straight into the breach.

What volleys will meet the four U.S. spacecraft - Deep Space 1, Stardust, Deep Impact and CONTOUR - as they fly by a half dozen comets, remains unknown.

"It's not like going by an asteroid or a planet, which are quite benign, because comets are actually throwing things at you," said Donald Yeomans, a cometary expert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

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