Deep Impact Spacecraft Strike Comet
Posted on July 5, 2005
NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft had a successful mission today with a perfect strike on the Comet Tempel 1. Deep Impact sent an 820-pound impactor probe screaming into the comet at 23,000 miles per hour. Deep Impact remained a safe distance away to take photographs and measurements of the collision. The picture on the right is an image taken by the high-resolution camera aboard Deep Impact's flyby spacecraft after the mission's impactor collided with the comet. The BBC reports that NASA said the mission was a perfect hit:
"We hit it just exactly where we wanted to," said an ecstatic Dr Don Yeomans, a Nasa mission scientist.NASA has a website dedicated to the mission which also provides a flash animation of the mission including an animation of the probe striking the comet. The website also contains updated photographs as they are received from the Deep Impact spacecraft."The impact was bigger than I expected, and bigger than most of us expected. We've got all the data we could possibly ask for."
Comets - giant "dirty snowballs", as some have called them - are believed to contain materials that have remained largely unchanged since the formation of the Solar System 4.6 billion years ago.
Scientists hope that by getting "under the skin" of Comet Tempel 1, they can gain new information on the Solar System's original composition and perhaps even how life emerged in our corner of the Universe.