Scheduled for July 2005, Deep Impact's spacecraft will arrive at Comet Tempel 1 and become the first mission to impact the surface of a comet.

NASA's approval today of the $279 million Deep Impact mission means humanity will no longer be only on the receiving end of comet impacts. Now we're going to go and slam into one ourselves. Or at least send a robot to do it.

9P/Tempel 1 Copyright 1994 by Gerald Rhemann This image was obtained on 1994 April 3.95 UT with the 171/200/257mm Schmidt camera. Exposure time was 6 minutes and the photographic emulsion was hypered Technical Pan 2415. The comet's total magnitude was then about 10.8. (The image has been cropped by the webmaster to save space.) Discovery Ernst Wilhelm Liebrecht Tempel (Marseille, France) ...