Deep Impact successfully released its 820-pound impactor this morning at 2:07 EDT (0607 GMT), some 880,000 kilometers from the Tempel 1 comet. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has also reported that six hours before release of the impactor, the spacecraft performed a successful trajectory correction, using a 30-second burn to change Deep Impact’s velocity by about one kilometer per hour. Another burn occurred twelve minutes after impactor release, when the flyby spacecraft began a 14-minute burn designed to move it out of the path of the oncoming comet and place it in the best position to observe the impact.
Image: One hundred and seventy-one days into its 172-day journey to comet Tempel 1, NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft successfully released its impactor at 2:07 a.m. Sunday, Eastern Daylight Time. This image of Deep Impact’s impactor probe was taken by the mission’s mother ship, or flyby spacecraft, after the two separated. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
