Monday, July 4, 2005

NASA’s Deep Impact probe collided with the comet Tempel 1 on Monday, as intended by scientists. The collision took place at 5:45 UTC and NASA held a press briefing shortly after at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, NASA’s non-manned space flight control center. A full-fledged press conference by NASA is scheduled to be at JPL on Monday afternoon at 2 p.m. PDT (9:00 UTC).

The experiment, intending to provide more information about the make up of comets, consisted of a 370 kg projectile being fired at the comet in order to observe and analyse the resultant impact. With information gleaned from the impact, the comet’s general make-up can be established and more accurate hypotheses regarding how the Solar system and the universe came to be.