Deep Impact mission

Article By:

Käufl, Hans-Ulrich Infrared Instrumentation Department, European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany.

Last reviewed:February 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.182950

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• Deep Impact, published 2008:Download PDF Get Adobe Acrobat Reader

The first space mission to expose and study the material beneath the surface of a comet. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) Deep Impact spacecraft reached the comet 9P/Tempel 1 (hereafter Tempel 1) on July 4, 2005 (Fig. 1). The spacecraft separated into a fly-by probe and an impactor, the latter of which smashed into the comet’s nucleus. The impact created an artificial impact crater, ejecting a cloud of powdery material from Tempel 1‘s surface and interior. In a coordinated observation campaign, detailed scans of the impact and this material were obtained at wavelengths from radio waves to x-rays by the Deep Impact fly-by spacecraft itself, the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft (then en route to its rendezvous with the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014), other satellites, and a network of all major astronomical observatories on Earth. See also: Comet; Hubble Space Telescope; Rosetta mission; Spitzer Space Telescope; Spacecraft structure

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