(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005-11-10)
Rocca, Jennifer; Wissler, Steven; Kubitschek, Daniel G.
Deep Impact Comet Encounter was a mission to crash the Impactor spacecraft and its Impactor Targeting Sensor (ITS) into Comet Tempel 1 and record the event via a Flyby spacecraft. The Deep Impact spacecrafts, Flyby and Impactor, were launched together aboard a Delta II rocket from Kennedy Space Flight Center on January 12, 2005. Impactor ended its almost six-month mission by successfully transmitting back images of the comet as it plowed into the surface of Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005. Flyby successfully transmitted back the first image of the Impactor’s collision with Tempel 1 via its High Resolution Imager (HRI), the largest telescope ever to be deployed into deep space