Deep Impact spacecraft completed a firing of its onboard rocket motors

Designed to study the composition of the comet interior of Tempel, NASA's Deep Impact was launched on 2005. Till date Deep Impact has travelled a total of 4.2 billion miles.

Deep Impact spacecraft completed a firing of its onboard rocket motors Oct 4. The maneuver had commenced at 1 P.M. PDT and lasted for nearly 71 seconds, and changed its velocity by 4.5 mph.

This rocket burn was conducted to keep the comet hunter's options open for another exploration of a solar system small body.

On July 3, 2005, the spacecraft deployed an impactor that was essentially "run over" by the nucleus of comet Tempel 1 on July 4. Sixteen days after comet encounter, the Deep Impact team placed the spacecraft on a trajectory to fly past Earth in late December 2007. This extended mission of the Deep Impact spacecraft culminated in the successful flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 4, 2010.

Prior to this Deep Impact had completed a 140-second firing of its onboard rocket motors on Nov. 24. This was performed to keep the comet hunter's options open for yet another exploration of a solar system small body.

The Deep Impact mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington is being managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. It is a part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.