Crater on comet 'partly healed itself'

Crater on comet 'partly healed itself'
By Kimberly Segal and John Zarrella, CNN
February 15, 2011 9:24 p.m. EST

(CNN) -- To the untrained eye, the images from 200 million miles away don't look much like a crater. But scientists say it's there, no question about it.

"We can see it in multiple images so I feel very confident that we actually did find the site," NASA co-investigator Pete Schultz said during a news conference at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

The images sent back over the course of Tuesday were taken by the Stardust Next spacecraft as it approached within 110 miles of the comet Tempel 1. It was billed as the Valentine's Day rendezvous as Stardust came closer and closer to the comet throughout Monday.

The hope was that Stardust would send back dramatic pictures of a hole in the comet made by another spacecraft back in 2005. During that mission, called Deep Impact, a probe was sent crashing into the surface of Tempel 1 in order to get a close-up look at the material below the surface.

More:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/02/15/space.comet/index.html

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