The spacecraft for NASA's Deep Impact mission are now perched atop the Delta II rocket that will launch them on their 6-month journey to encounter a speeding comet. Preparations for the launch, scheduled for January 12, are nearly complete.
Led by University of Maryland astronomer Michael A'Hern, the Deep Impact project will be the first mission to smash a hole in a comet and reveal the secrets of its interior. Comets are balls of ice, gas and dust that orbit the sun. Scientists believe that the permanently frozen cores of comets contain primitive debris from the solar system's formation some 4.5 billion years ago.