Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A body that strikes another, usually larger body in an impact, as a comet striking a planet.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any of several
machines ordevices in which a partimpacts on another, or on a material
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Frankly, I think a major impactor is probably the most likely. abb1 says:
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The impactor is expected to make a spectacular, football field-sized crater, seven to 15 stories deep, in the speeding comet.
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Keith's note: Hmm, LCROSS is an "impactor" - something that will crash into the moon at high speed.
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Keith's note: Hmm, LCROSS is an "impactor" - something that will crash into the moon at high speed.
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Keith's note: Hmm, LCROSS is an "impactor" - something that will crash into the moon at high speed.
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Keith's note: Hmm, LCROSS is an "impactor" - something that will crash into the moon at high speed.
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Carried aboard the impactor will be a standard mini-CD containing the names of comet, space and other enthusiasts from around the world.
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The best guess is that the impactor was a comet that measured perhaps a quarter of a mile (half a kilometer) wide.
msnbc.com: Community 2009
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NASA's Deep Impact space probe — which shares its name with a 1998 film about an asteroid that nearly destroys Earth — fires an 820-pound "impactor" today that will travel at 22,817 miles per hour into the Tempel-1 comet to collect scientific data.
Calendar 2005
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NASA's Deep Impact space probe — which shares its name with a 1998 film about an asteroid that nearly destroys Earth — fires an 820-pound "impactor" today that will travel at 22,817 miles per hour into the Tempel-1 comet to collect scientific data.
Calendar 2005
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