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There were many surprises in store when NASA’s recycled Deep Impact spacecraft soared past its second comet earlier this month, but nothing was more unexpected than the weather: It was snowing. Particles of ice, some as large as basketballs, were jetting off the surface of Comet Hartley 2, when the probe, now renamed EPOXI, flew by at a relative speed of 27,000 mph on Nov. 4.
“When we first saw this our mouths just dropped. The whole thing just looked like a snow globe,” Brown University’s Pete Schultz, a mission scientist, told reporters on a conference call Thursday.
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