High Maintenance Mom

On July 4, 2005 (EDT), NASA's Deep Impact mission successfully collided the first man-made spacecraft into a comet, revealing some of the secrets of its interior. The collision jettisoned materials from the comet into space for analysis and generated an immense flash of light...

"You can not help but get a big flash when objects meet at 23,000 miles per hour," said Deep Impact co-investigator Dr. Pete Schultz of Brown University, Providence, R.I. "The heat produced by impact was at least several thousand degrees Kelvin and at that extreme temperature just about any material begins to glow. Essentially, we generated our own incandescent photo flash for less than a second." (from NASA's Deep Impact Generates its own Spectacular Photo Flash)

Overview of Deep Impact information

• Comets: "Astronomers believe that comets are leftover debris from a collection of gas, ice, rocks, and dust that formed the outer planets about 4.6 billion years ago." (from WORLD BOOK @ NASA ) They are, therefore, one of the best artifacts for studying our solar system's formation. Analyses from the impact will also provide information about potential implications of comets colliding with Earth.
• Tempel 1: Comet Tempel 1, discovered in 1867 by Ernst Tempel, orbits the Sun every 5.5 years. Tempel was approximately 83 million miles from Earth when Deep Impact crashed into it.
• Equipment: Flyby spacecraft (about the size of a Volkswagon beetle) with a set of instruments for navigation, communication, and optical imaging and infrared spectral mapping plus the smart impactor.
• Impactor: 370 kg (~820 lbs) battery-powered spacecraft the size of a coffee table that can operate independently of the flyby spacecraft for one day. A camera on the impactor captures and relays images of the comet's nucleus just seconds before collision.
• Impact: Occurred on July 4, 2005 at about 1:52 am (EDT - that's 10:52 PM on July 3rd on the west coast). The impact speed estimated at approximately 10 km/s (23,000 mph), was not forceful enough to make an appreciable change in the comet's orbital path around the Sun. It was expected to create a crater about 100m wide and 28m deep.
• Mission: Planning began in 1999; the combined Deep Impact spacecraft was launched on January 12, 2005; 24 hours before impact the impactor was released toward the comet; the flyby spacecraft maneuvered to a new path to observe and records the impact, the ejected material blasted from the crater, and the structure and composition of the crater's interior. Professional and amateur astronomers also observing the impact and its aftermath from the Earth.

All information from the NASA Deep Impact Website.