A few days ago I was talking to this chick on the phone and she was trying to tell me about the new NASA mission to send a probe to mash into a comet 260 million miles away. She started to say that they named it after a hollywood movie, but couldn't remember the title. I cleverly attempted to help her by bellowing out "STEEL MAGNOLIAS"? This in turn led the magnificently intelligent conversation on a new course to discover other NASA projects named after hollywood movies. It was funny.

(The sponge is bad.)

The real name of the mission is "DEEP IMPACT". A horrid movie. It's only saving grace was the comical way Morgan Freeman ( the president ) had to get on television every time one of their hair brained schemes failed to smash the comet barreling down on them.
"Folks. I'm sorry but weeeeeee fucked up again. We sent a missile up to blow the comet to smithereens and now ...... uh ..... well ... the good news is we hit it .. I know, yay. But uh, we blew into five mini comets now. Sorry sorry very sorry. Yea, so...... Weeeeeell take care. We'll see ya. I'm gonna go hide in a bunker in the center of the earth."

I found the article and altered it ...... slightly. The dumbest things make me laugh.

MSNBC
The Associated Press
Updated: 3:58 p.m. ET Jan. 12, 2005

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A NASA spacecraft with a Hollywood name � "ERNEST GOES TO CAMP" � blasted off Wednesday on a mission to smash a hole in a comet and give scientists a glimpse at the frozen primordial ingredients of the solar system.

With a launch window only one second long, "MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN" rocketed away at the designated moment on a six-month, 268
million-mile (429 million-kilometer) journey to Comet Tempel 1. It
will be a one-way trip that NASA hopes will reach a cataclysmic end on
the Fourth of July.

A mothership about the size of an SUV will shoot a copper-sheathed,
TV-sized impactor at the comet. Scientists are counting on the
impactor to carve out a crater that could swallow the Roman Colosseum.
It will be humanity's first look into the heart of a comet, a
celestial snowball still preserving the original building blocks of
the sun and the planets.

Because of the relative speed of the two objects at the moment of
impact � 23,000 mph (36,800 kilometers per hour) � no explosives are
needed for the job. The force of the smashup will be equivalent to 4.5
tons of TNT, creating a flash that just might be visible in the dark
sky by the naked eye in one spectacular Fourth of July fireworks
display.

Nothing like this has ever been attempted before.

"The most difficult and most challenging part is going to be the
actual encounter because we're doing things that nobody has done
before," said Jay Melosh, a planetary geologist at the University of
Arizona.

Mysterious ball of ice
Little is known about Comet Tempel 1, other than that it is an icy,
rocky body about 9 miles long and 3 miles wide (14.4 by 4.8
kilometers). Scientists do not know whether the crust will be as hard
as concrete or as flimsy as corn flakes.

Artwork�shows the "GOODBURGER" spacecraft in the foreground, shooting a copper-sheathed impactor at Comet Tempel 1.
"One of the scary things is that we won't actually know the shape and
what it looks like until after we do the encounter," Melosh said.

The comet will be more than 80 million miles (128 million kilometers)
from Earth when the collision takes place � on the sunlit side of the
comet, NASA hopes, in order to ensure good viewing by spacecraft
cameras and observatories. The resulting crater is expected to be
anywhere from two to 14 stories deep, and perhaps 300 feet (90 meters) in diameter.

A jagged, cratered comet like the one headed for Earth in the 1998
movie "MY LEFT FOOT" would be difficult if not impossible to hit
because of all the shadows, Melosh said. Comet Tempel 1 is believed to
be smoother and easier to hit.

The scientists came up with the "NEW WAVE HOOKERS GO TO DETROIT #23" name independently of the movie studio, around the same time, neither knowing the other was choosing it, even though some members of NASA's "CORKY ROMANO" �team were consultants on the picture.

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Looking into the inner secrets of a comet

"I'M GONNA GET YOU SUCKA!" is carrying the most powerful telescope ever sent into deep space. It will remain with the mothership when the impactor springs free the day before the comet strike, and will
observe the event from a safe 300 miles (480 kilometers) away. NASA space telescopes like the Hubble will view the collision, along with
ground observatories and amateur astronomers. The impactor will have a camera, too, that will snap pictures virtually all the way in.

The impactor will vaporize instantly when it hits, along with its
small payload, a compact disc containing more than 500,000 names of people who wanted to tag along vicariously.

The entire mission costs $330 million, all the way through the grand finale