Hi,

Here's the latest on the Deep Impact. We are barely twelve hours from the
"accident in space". So brace yourself and tighten your seat belts.

Manoj

******
DC Agle (818) 393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Dolores Beasley (202) 358-1753
NASA Headquarters, Washington

Lee Tune (301) 405-4679
University of Maryland, College Park

One hundred and seventy-one days into its 172-day journey to comet Tempel 1,
NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft successfully released its impactor at 11:07 p.m.
Saturday, Pacific Daylight Time (2:07 a.m. Sunday, Eastern Daylight Time).

At release, the impactor was about 880,000 kilometers (547,000 miles) away from
its quarry. The separation of flyby spacecraft and the washing-machine-sized,
copper-fortified impactor is one in a series of important mission milestones
that will cap off with a planned encounter with the comet at 10:52 p.m. Sunday,
PDT (1:52 a.m. on July 4, EDT).

Six hours prior to impactor release, the Deep Impact spacecraft successfully
performed its fourth trajectory correction maneuver. The 30-second burn changed
the spacecraft's velocity by about one kilometer per hour (less than one mile
per hour). The goal of the burn is to place the impactor as close as possible to
the direct path of onrushing comet Tempel 1.

Soon after the trajectory maneuver was completed, the impactor engineers began
the final steps that would lead to it being ready for free flight. The plan
culminated with activation of the impactor's batteries at 10:12 p.m., PDT (1:12
a.m. Sunday, EDT). Deep Impact's impactor has no solar cells; the vehicle's
batteries are expected to provide all the power required for its short day-long
life.

In order to release the impactor, separation pyros fired allowing a spring to
uncoil and separate the two spacecraft at a speed of about 35 centimeters per
second (0.78 mile per hour).

With Tempel 1 closing the distance between it and impactor at about 10
kilometers (6 miles) per second, there is little time for mission controllers to
admire their work. Twelve minutes after impactor release the flyby began a
14-minute long divert burn that slowed its velocity relative to the impactor by
102 meters per second (227 miles per hour), moving it out of the path of the
onrushing comet nucleus and setting the stage for a ringside seat of celestial
fireworks to come less than 24 hours later.

More info here

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2005-108


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