Latest EPOXI Stories

By Nichola Groom PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) - A NASA spacecraft is "healthyand ready" for its July 4 collision with a comet and hasalready provided images critical to understanding the buildingblocks of life on Earth, officials said on Friday. While still roughly 1.5 million miles from its target, thefast-moving Deep Impact craft is on track for its Saturdayrelease of a coffee-table sized impactor that is expected toblast a stadium-sized crater into comet Tempel 1. "Both the fly-by and the...

JPL -- NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft continues to sail through its final checkout, as it hurtles toward comet Tempel 1. Impact with the comet is scheduled for 1:52 a.m. EDT, July 4 (10:52 p.m. PDT, July 3). "The time of comet encounter is near and the major mission milestones are getting closer and closer together," said Rick Grammier, Deep Impact project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "After all the years of design, training and simulations, we...

JPL -- NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft observed a massive, short-lived outburst of ice or other particles from comet Tempel 1 that temporarily expanded the size and reflectivity of the cloud of dust and gas (coma) that surrounds the comet nucleus. The outburst was detected as a dramatic brightening of the comet on June 22. It is the second of two such events observed in the past two weeks. A smaller outburst also was seen on June 14 by Deep Impact, the Hubble Space Telescope and by ground based...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. "” When comet Tempel 1 collides with a NASA space probe in the early morning hours of July 4, 2005, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory expect some holiday sizzle "“ a brilliant flash and a dramatic spray of debris.This cosmic collision will create a crater exposing Tempel 1's interior. Like all comets, Tempel 1 consists of the frozen remains of material that formed the solar system. But what, precisely, is this stuff? How is it put together? Peter Schultz, crater...

JPL -- Fifty-nine days before going head-to-head with comet Tempel 1, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft successfully executed the second trajectory correction maneuver of the mission. The burn further refined the spacecraft's trajectory, or flight path, and also moved forward the expected time of the Independence Day comet encounter so impact would be visible by ground- and space- based observatories. The 95-second burn "“ the longest remaining firing of the spacecraft's motors prior to comet...

JPL -- Sixty-nine days before it gets up-close-and-personal with a comet, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft successfully photographed its quarry, comet Tempel 1, from a distance of 64 million kilometers (39.7 million miles).The image, the first of many comet portraits it will take over the next 10 weeks, will aid Deep Impact's navigators, engineers and scientists as they plot their final trajectory toward an Independence Day encounter."It is great to get a first glimpse at the comet from our...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- A NASA spacecraft with a Hollywood name - Deep Impact - blasted off Wednesday on a mission to smash a hole in a comet and give scientists a glimpse of the frozen primordial ingredients of the solar system. With a launch window only one second long, Deep Impact rocketed away at the designated moment on a six-month, 268-million-mile journey to Comet Tempel 1. It will be a one-way trip that NASA hopes will reach a cataclysmic end on the Fourth of July. "We are...

The Deep Impact mission will send a large copper projectile crashing into the surface of a comet at more than 20,000 miles per hour, creating a huge crater and revealing never before seen materials and the internal compostion and structure of a comet.Astrobiology Magazine -- In the movie "Deep Impact," NASA astronauts try to prevent a comet from hitting Earth. When the mission fails, as a last desperate act they fly their spacecraft into the comet, blowing it to smithereens....