“There is a comet up in the sky wondering, what in the heck just happened,” commented Charles Elachi, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In an astonishingly tricky mission, Deep Impact traveled 268 million miles over six months to wreak havoc on the comet. According to NASA scientist Don Yeomans, “We hit it just exactly where we wanted to.” More than 80 million people visited the NASA website in the 24 hours following the blast to witness the cosmic fireworks. NASA assures us that there is, in fact, something scientifically redeemable about such violence. After our Sun and planets formed 4.6 billion years ago, comets were believed to have been formed out of the remaining dust and gases. By blasting a crater into the surface of Tempel 1 and uncovering its pristine interior, scientists hope to examine the primordial remnants of our solar system to gain insight into its formation. The image and caption below show the materials that were excavated from comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005, when Deep Impact’s probe plunged below its surface.
