A Delta II rocket carrying the Deep Impact spacecraft blasts off from Florida in January 2005.
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Image courtesy NASA.
Deep Impact Blasts Off
News story originally written on January 14, 2005
A rocket carrying NASA's Deep Impact
spacecraft blasted off on January 12,
2005. Deep Impact will study a comet.
Deep Impact has two parts. One part will fly by the comet. The other part,
called an "impactor", will crash into the comet! The impactor will make a crater
as big as a football stadium on the comet. Scientists want to see what the
insides of a comet are like. The flyby part of Deep Impact will take pictures
before, during, and after the crash.
Deep Impact will get to Comet Temple 1 on the Fourth of July, 2005. The comet
is named after Ernst Tempel, who discovered it in 1867. Comet Temple 1 goes
around the Sun once every 5.5 years.
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