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Space Topics

The Great Comet Crater Contest


Announcing the Winners!


When NASA's Deep Impact mission slammed into comet Tempel 1 in July 2005, The Planetary Society expected to make an immediate announcement about the winners of its "Great Comet Crater Contest" to guess the diameter of the crater created by the impact. However, one learns to expect the unexpected with space exploration; six months after the impactor kicked up an opaque cloud of comet debris, team scientists have learned a lot about comet Tempel 1 but can still only estimate the crater's size as being somewhere between 100 and 250 meters in diameter.

The Planetary Society has, therefore, selected at random three grand prize winners from the 1,865 contest entrants who submitted a guess within the estimated size range. The grand prize winners and their respective crater estimates are Wojciech Karcz, Tarnowskie Gory, Poland - 161 meters; Michael Ramo, Danielson, Connecticut - 153 meters; and Tim Thomas, Hayward, California - 141.4272 meters.

More than 7,000 people from nearly 100 countries entered the contest, with the median guess of crater size being 90 meters. In addition to the three grand prize winners, the Society randomly selected 150 runners-up representing 24 nations: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, USA, and Venezuela.

Each grand prize winner will receive a custom-made plaque from Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp (BATC), who built the Deep Impact spacecraft. The plaque is made of the same kind of copper material that made up the heavy mass of the impactor, laser-engraved with the mission logo. The grand prize winners will also each receive a complimentary Planetary Society membership. The runner-up prizes will consist of a certificate and a Deep Impact spacecraft paper model provided by BATC.