Space.com reports that NASA is on schedule to smash a comet Sunday night.
With a little more than two days left in its six-month journey, managers for NASA’s Deep Impact mission said the spacecraft is on course to make its historic encounter with a comet late Sunday evening.The mission is slated to crash an 820-pound (371-kilogram) Impactor probe into Comet Tempel 1 and record the event via a Flyby mothership. The impact is expected to take place at 1:52 a.m. EDT (0552 GMT) on July 4.
“I’m pleased to report that both the Flyby and the Impactor spacecraft are ready for encounter operations,” Dave Spencer, Deep Impact’s mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), announced today at a mission briefing.
The announcement follows several major mission milestones that were achieved over the past two weeks.
There's a milestone tonight.
On late Saturday evening, 24 hours prior to its estimated collision with Tempel 1, the Impactor will separate from the Flyby mothership and begin its final approach on the comet. The mothership will then adjust its course to monitor the Impactor’s mission, Spencer explained.“Twelve minutes later the flyby spacecraft—now flying on its own—will turn and perform its largest maneuver of the entire mission,” Spencer said. “It will slow itself down by about 220 miles per hour relative to the Impactor … this slowdown will allow it to witness the impact events itself and subsequent crater formation for about 13 minutes after impact.”
Should something go wrong and the Flyby craft fail to break away from Tempel 1 after Impactor's release, there is a contingency plan to ram both vehicles into the comet's surface, Spencer added.
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NASA - Deep Impact mission site