21st Century Complete Guide to the NASA Deep Impact Space Mission to Comet Tempel 1 Launch to Impact on July 4, 2005, Images, Video Clips, Science (CD-ROM)

Here is the complete story of the historic Deep Impact spacecraft mission, which sent an impactor into Comet Tempel 1. On July 4, 2005 at 5:52:24 Universal Time the Deep Impact team received confirmation that the mission they had put into action in November of 1999 had reached success when the first image of a newly impacted comet Tempel 1 flashed onto the screens of the control room at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The dark icy nucleus with its own "fireworks" display showed that the impactor spacecraft, released from its flyby spacecraft 24 hours before had not only guided itself to the sunlit side of the comet nucleus, but had collided hard enough to brighten the comet coma so that the difference could be seen through telescopes on Earth. Images of the dark black nucleus of Comet Tempel 1 showed the ejecta plume caused by the impactor crashing into the icy surface. Those watching from Earth were actually able to see the plume grow as the images were returned through the antennas of the Deep Space Network. Deep Impact, a NASA Discovery Mission, is the first space mission to probe beneath the surface of a comet and reveal the secrets of its interior. Comet Tempel 1 was discovered in 1867 by Ernst Tempel. The comet has made many passages through the inner solar system orbiting the Sun every 5.5 years. This makes Tempel 1 a good target to study evolutionary change in the mantle, or upper crust. Comets are visible for two reasons. First, dust driven from a comet's nucleus reflects sunlight as it travels through space. Second, certain gases in the comet's coma, stimulated by the Sun, give off light like a fluorescent bulb. Over time, a comet may become less active or even dormant. Scientists are eager to learn whether comets exhaust their supply of gas and dust to space or seal it into their interiors. They would also like to learn about the structure of a comet's interior and how it is different from its surface. Seventeen days after its encounter with comet Tempel 1, NASA's Deep Impact flyby spacecraft successfully executed a trajectory correction maneuver that places the spacecraft on a path to fly past Earth on Dec. 31, 2007. The 900-second burn, which changed the spacecraft's velocity by 216 miles per hour, preserves the space agency's options for future use of the comet hunter. Coverage includes: * Details about the spacecraft, mission, science, technology, and educational aspects of the program. * An extensive multimedia gallery with hundreds of images, plu 24 video clips of the mission. This incredible CD-ROM is packed with over 7,000 pages reproduced using Adobe Acrobat PDF software - allowing direct viewing on Windows and Macintosh systems. Our news and educational CD-ROM and DVD-ROM discs are privately compiled collections of official public domain U.S. government files and documents - they are not produced by the federal government. They are designed to provide a convenient user-friendly reference work, utilizing the benefits of the Adobe Acrobat format to uniformly present thousands of pages that can be rapidly reviewed, searched by finding specific words, or printed without untold hours of tedious research and downloading. Vast archives of important public domain government information that might otherwise remain inaccessible are available for instant review no matter where you are. This book-on-a-disc format makes a great reference work and educational tool. There is no other reference that is as fast, convenient, comprehensive, thoroughly researched, and portable - everything you need to know, from the federal sources you trust. World Spaceflight News has covered spaceflight and the Space Shuttle program since 1983. At WSN, our mission is simple: provide space enthusiasts and professionals around the globe with unique technical information and historical material about spaceflight. We hope that a better appreciation of the complexities and challenges posed by space exploration will foster incr