Deep Impact Status Report
One hundred and seventy-one days into its 172-day journey to 
comet Tempel 1, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft successfully 
released its impactor at 11:07 p.m. Saturday, Pacific Daylight 
Time.
One hundred and seventy-one days into its 172-day journey to 
comet Tempel 1, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft successfully 
released its impactor at 11:07 p.m. Saturday, Pacific Daylight 
Time (2:07 a.m. Sunday, Eastern Daylight Time).At release, the impactor was about 880,000 kilometers (547,000 miles) 
away from its quarry. The separation of flyby spacecraft 
and the washing-machine-sized, copper-fortified impactor 
is one in a series of important mission milestones that 
will cap off with a planned encounter with the comet at 
10:52 p.m. Sunday, PDT (1:52 a.m. on July 4, EDT).Six hours prior to impactor release, the Deep Impact spacecraft 
successfully performed its fourth trajectory correction maneuver. 
The 30-second burn changed the spacecraft's velocity by about one 
kilometer per hour (less than one mile per hour). The goal of the 
burn is to place the impactor as close as possible to the direct 
path of onrushing comet Tempel 1.Soon after the trajectory maneuver was completed, the impactor 
engineers began the final steps that would lead to it being ready 
for free flight. The plan culminated with activation of the 
impactor's batteries at 10:12 p.m., PDT (1:12 a.m. Sunday, EDT). 
Deep Impact's impactor has no solar cells; the vehicle's batteries 
are expected to provide all the power required for its short 
day-long life.In order to release the impactor, separation pyros fired allowing 
a spring to uncoil and separate the two spacecraft at a speed of 
about 35 centimeters per second (0.78 mile per hour).With Tempel 1 closing the distance between it and impactor at about 
10 kilometers (6 miles) per second, there is little time for mission 
controllers to admire their work. Twelve minutes after impactor release 
the flyby began a 14-minute long divert burn that slowed its velocity 
relative to the impactor by 102 meters per second (227 miles per hour), 
moving it out of the path of the onrushing comet nucleus and setting 
the stage for a ringside seat of celestial fireworks to come less 
than 24 hours later.Deep Impact mission controllers have confirmed the impactor's S-band 
antenna is talking to the flyby spacecraft. All impactor data including 
the expected remarkable images of its final dive into the comet's nucleus 
will be transmitted to the flyby craft -- which will then downlink them 
to Deep Space Network antennas that are listening 134 million kilometers 
(83 million miles) away.While all is going as expected on the Deep Impact spacecraft the 
comet itself is putting on something of a show. The 14-kilometer-long 
(8.7-mile-long) comet Tempel 1 displayed another cometary outburst on 
July 2 at 1:34 a.m. PDT (4:34 a.m.EDT) when a massive, short-lived blast 
of ice or other particles escaped from inside the comet's nucleus and 
temporarily expanded the size and reflectivity of the cloud of dust and 
gas (coma) that surrounds it. The July 2 outburst is the fourth observed 
in the past three weeks.Three of the outbursts appear to have originated from the same area on 
the surface of the nucleus but they do not occur every time that that 
area faces the Sun."The comet is definitely full of surprises so far and probably has a 
few more in store for us," said Deep Impact Project Manager Rick Grammier 
of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.  "None of this overly
concerns us nor has it forced us to modify our nominal mission plan."Information and images from a camera aboard Deep Impact's impactor and 
flyby spacecraft can be watched in near-real time atwww.nasa.gov/deepimpact.For additional information about Deep Impact on the Internet, 
visithttp://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov.