The Deep Impact Project

Delivering a 1/3-ton impactor at 10 km/s into P/Tempel 1 on 4 July 2005 we are carrying out the first planet-scale experiment on a comet. The goals are to understand the physical structure of the outer layers and the evolutionary differences between surface and interior. Cratering experts disagree on the phenomenolgy that will occur - from a crater >200m diamter and >30m deep to deep tunneling into very porous material. Our baseline is crater ~100m diamter and ~25m deep formed in ~200 seconds. The flyby spacecraft will have 800 seconds to observe crater formation and final state with cameras and a long-slit near-infrared (1-5 micron) spectrometer. Ground-based and low-Earth orbital observations will play an important role in interpretation. This work is supported by a large science team a large technical team and funding from NASA.