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Deep Impact
-A Comet’s composition could reveal Earth’s origins

On July 4, NASA scientists aim to punch a hole in the belly of a comet. If they are lucky, secrets of the solar system locked away for billions of years will spill out.
The unprecedented mission, named Deep Impact, is akin to a dissection: Investigators hope that by blasting Tempel 1, an oblong comet roughly nine miles long, they’ll expose its basic anatomy.
Comets are whizzing relics, mysterious amalgams of rock, ice, and dust, born with the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. They may have helped shape our cosmic neighborhood. “Many scientists think that comets brought to Earth a lot of the water and all the organics that were needed to create life,” says Michael A’hearn, the project’s principal investigator.
A’hearn explains that the size, shape, and depth of the impact crater, along with material ejected from it, will reveal the comet’s structure. “Comets are key to understanding the whole planetary system,” he says.
Engineers designed two vehicles for the mission, an SUV-size flyby spacecraft, equipped with telescopes, cameras and a spectrometer, and an 830-pound impact craft that’s about the size of a washing machine. Launched in January, the flyby craft has carried the impactor to Tempel 1, 83 million miles from Earth. At about 500,000 miles from Tempel 1, it will release the impactor and retreat to record the collision. The impactor will steer itself into the comet’s path, transmitting images until the comets slams into it with the force of nearly five tons of dynamite.
A’hearn expects a crater about the size of a football field. What exactly Deep Impact will reveal is all part of the excitement – and anxiety – of long-distance science.