A HUMMINGBIRD could soon be visiting the heavens—in a manner of
speaking. NASA engineers want to build a space probe that behaves like a
hummingbird approaching a flower. In other words it will use a touch-and-go
landing technique to capture and analyse samples from a comet’s central core for
the first time.
The team, led by Glenn Carle of the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett
Field, California, is hoping to convince NASA chiefs to press ahead with its
Hummingbird Comet Nucleus Analysis Mission this summer. The Ames team hopes to
launch the probe sometime around 2005, to complement…
