Scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have release on Thursday images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of a rare collision of space objects with the planet Jupiter.
Called the “sharpest visible-light picture,” scientist explained the collision produces a phenomenon rarely seen or captured by any human being.
Aside from NASA scientist, an amateur Australian stargazer was the lucky few who have witnessed personally the collision and expanding gash that followed.
“The magnitude of the impact and the impression that it had left, while looking at the images, is very rare,” said NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center Scientist Amy Simon-Miller, Md.
She added that the diameter of the space object that impacted the planet was estimated to be more than 400 meters, adding that the debris may have been from an asteroid or a comet that was attracted by the planet’s gravitational pull.
Meanwhile, NASA officials on Sunday said that the images were only proofs that the repairs to the 19-year-old space telescope were successful.
Last May, at least seven astronauts on board the Space shuttle Atlantis have flown out in space for a final repair and improvement mission of the Hubble telescope.
The Hubble-repair was considered as the most “technically ambitious” in-space restoration project. It was the fifth servicing mission to the space telescope and it took 11 days for the astronauts to complete the mission, including some five spacewalks and installation of new instruments.
New batteries were also inserted to the Hubble power source to it another five or a maximum of ten years additional service term.
The space telescope has been instrumental for NASA scientists in their study of the universe. Launched in 1990, the telescope has given them eyes outside the barrier of clouds in earth.
The failure to transmit data back to earth was the reason behind the repair, which was delayed several times since its last servicing trip in 2002.
Related posts: