That looked like the full story, until we were able to go out and take a close look at the long-period cometary fragments.

Something had allowed that cometary fragment to crash undetected into the Sagdeyev space farm.

Between July 16 and 22, 1994, all the cometary fragments, one after another, collided with Jupiter.

Perhaps the cometary fragments, surrounded by halos of dust, were much smaller than they seemed.

Or the molecules responsible for the stains might have been in the cometary fragments in the first place.

"While the captain only survived long enough to find us a hiding place in that cometary fragment."

Every twenty minutes a cometary fragment, a couple of hundred meters across, hit the surface.

"I don't think the cometary fragment is going to miss us."

"The impact of what we believe is a cometary fragment has created tsunamis," Idarolan said.

Scientists are not sure what would happen as the cometary fragments penetrated Jupiter's atmosphere.