Deep Impact


Deep Impact

A NASA probe launched Jan. 12 2005 and set to rendezvous with Comet Tempel 1 in July of the same year. The spacecraft carried a copper-tipped projectile the size of a washing machine that was scheduled to crash into the comet, blasting a hole in its surface. Scientists intended that the impact should expose the comet's interior, revealing information on its chemical and physical makeup and providing data that would advance our understanding of what the Solar System was like when the planets began to form more than 4.6 billion years ago.