October 28, 2010 Exactly one week before the world gets a new
look at comet Hartley 2 via NASA's EPOXI mission, observations
of the comet by the Arecibo Planetary Radar in Puerto Rico have
offered scientists a tantalizing preview. "It kind of looks like
a cross between a bowling pin and a pickle," said EPOXI project
manager Tim Larson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, Calif. "Only it's about 14-thousand-times larger and
hurtling through space at 23 miles per second." A new image is
online at http://www.naic.edu/~pradar/103P. Scientists using
Arecibo's massive radar dish began observations of Hartley 2 on
Oct. 24, just four days after the comet made its closest
approach to Earth since its discovery in 1986. (On Oct. 20, the
comet came within 17.7 million kilometers, or 11 million miles,
of Earth). The observations are scheduled to continue through
Friday, Oct. 29. During the Nov. 4 flyby, the cameras aboard the
EPOXI mission spacecraft will get within 700 kilometers (about
435 miles) of the come