Contour’s Unfortunate End

NASA’s Contour spacecraft, set to explore comets in the Solar System
may have broken into two pieces while attemping an orbital transfer burn. The Kitt Peak observatory managed to take a picture of two objects in a trajectory that the Contour spacecraft was supposed to have taken. It is possible that the spacecraft suffered an explosion which ripped the craft in two, or possibly was hit by a piece of space debris. It is unlikely that there will ever be a confirmable cause to the accident as the pieces are now on a deep-space trajectory. This is another unfortunate end for a NASA space probe that comes at a bad time as NASA is trying to get more funding for further deep space missions.