Full Hit at Comet Tempel 1! It's what NASA's Deep Impact mother ship saw on July 4, 2005 at 1:52 a.m. EDT. It's the impact of its impactor at comet Tempel 1! The Deep Impact mother ship had released the impactor some 24 hrs before, putting it on its way to a brutal encounter with the comet. The Deep Impact mission launched in January 2005 to meet with this periodic comet in the purpose of advancing the knowledge of such celestial objects further. Comets are leftovers of the formation of our solar system. As such, they are believed to contain material dating back to 4.5 billion years. The mission's 39-by-39-inch (1-by-1-meter) impactor just punctured the surface of comet Tempel 1 as the Deep Impact carrier ship had performed a deflection maneuver and was imaging the scene from just 310 mi (500 km) away! The data collected through the craft medium and high resolution imagers and infrared spectrometer will help to better characterize the structure of comets, particularly helping to determine whether a comet's nucleus is a conglomerate of unprocessed material only or whether some differentiation happens during the comet's formation, leading to a more consistent surface. Comet Tempel 1 is the size of the island of Manhattan. The impact occurred after the mission had intercepted the comet's trajectory, 83 million miles (133.6 million km) away from the Earth. picture site 'Amateur Astronomy' based on a picture NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD