Tempel 1 comet

Comet Impact on Discovery

Discovery Channel’s 20th anniversary, Comet Impact premieres Sunday, July 31, 2005 at 10 p.m., and chronicles NASA’s Deep Impact mission from the very beginning to the explosive finish, using state-of-the-art digital imaging to recreate the craft’s journey and ending with footage of the actual impact transmitted from space.

The mission was almost impossible. The target, the Tempel 1 comet, was hurtling though space at 23,000 miles per hour when NASA scientists shot it with an 800-pound probe to try and expose the comet’s core. Not only would this give scientists key insights into its make-up and clues into the birth of our solar system, they also wanted to see if someday we could hit one that posed a threat. Before being destroyed on impact, the probe revealed that Tempel 1 was more potato-shaped than pickle-shaped, as scientists had predicted. When the impactor hit the comet, there was a huge flash of heat and light, followed by a cloud of gas and debris, indicating that the comet has a dusty surface with ice just beneath. Unfortunately, this dust cloud blocked clear images of the crater scientists had been hoping for, but they'll be able to get that as other observatories lock onto Tempel 1 in the coming days.

In Comet Impact, the program chronicles scientists, designers and builders working tirelessly to build the craft so that it can be launched on January 12, 2005, giving it time to travel 250 million miles to intercept the comet. The Deep Impact mission began seven years ago when astronomer Mike Belton had a theory of using a comet’s incredible speed against itself to cause a large amount of damage with a fairly small probe. NASA then had to assemble a team of experts from 12 different disciplines to create a spacecraft that could travel across deep space using solar power, park about 300 miles off the comet’s path, then shoot a probe straight at the comet. The program will also include footage of the actual impact from several different sources, and updates from scientists to explain what these findings mean about the universe as we know it.

Comet Impact is produced for Discovery Channel by New Pony Productions. Tomi Landis is executive producer for Discovery Channel and Ron Bowman director/producer for New Pony Productions.