Deep Impact Spacecraft

NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft is closing in on its historic rendezvous with comet Tempel 1, a culmination of what Jet Propulsion Laboratory Director Charles Elachi called "one of the most daring and risky missions" the lab had ever undertaken. If all goes well, the spacecraft's 820-pound impactor will smash into the comet's core at 10:52 p.m. PDT today. The cosmic collision and its aftermath will be observed by three telescopes in orbit and every major telescope on the Earth's surface.

NASA has given Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers permission to place the Deep Impact spacecraft on an orbit that might allow it to intercept another comet. The craft fired its thrusters Wednesday so that it would sweep by Earth in 2008. An extension would cost about 10% of the mission's $333-million cost. JPL engineers hope the maneuver will allow the spacecraft to steer toward 85P/Boethin, a comet that was discovered in 1975 and orbits the sun every 11 years.

NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft lifted off Wednesday from Cape Canaveral in Florida on the first stage of a six-month journey to intercept the comet Tempel 1. When the craft reaches Tempel 1 near the orbit of Mars, it will fire a probe at the comet, digging out a crater deep enough to hold a 14-story building. Scientists hope to discover what comets are made of and whether they are as hard as asteroids or as soft and mushy as gypsum.

Comets of the solar system, beware. NASA is coming after you for a good galactic smackdown. On July 3, the Deep Impact mission will attempt to give scientists and the public a first-ever look inside a comet. And scientists are hoping it will happen with a bang. Launched in November 1999, the spacecraft has been hurling itself toward Comet Tempel 1 some 83 million miles away.

An 820-pound comet-busting "bullet" released from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft successfully intercepted comet Tempel 1 late Sunday, creating a brief flash observed by telescopes in orbit and on Earth. Traveling at a relative velocity of 23,000 mph, the copper "impactor" smashed into the surface of the comet at 10:52 p.m. PDT, vaporizing itself and sending a luminous plume of debris into space. "Team, we have a confirmation," mission control said five minutes later.

The collision of a probe from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft with comet Tempel 1 blew a plume of debris thousands of miles into space and provided a spectacular first glimpse of the insides of a comet -- ancient bodies that may hold the key to the origins of the solar system -- scientists said Monday.

Rather than a dirty snowball darting across the solar system, the comet targeted by a NASA probe July 4 turns out to be a "snowy dirtball" instead, made mostly of dust, according to the first detailed results from the Deep Impact comet-hunting mission. Mixed in the dust is a soup of potentially life-spawning organic compounds all wrapped within a ball of space fluff with less consistency than a snowbank, scientists reported Tuesday.