[meteorite-list] Deep Impact Spacecraft Completes Rocket Burn

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2012 17:01:12 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201210050001.q9501Cmw016375_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-313

Deep Impact Spacecraft Completes Rocket Burn
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
October 04, 2012

Deep Impact Mission Status

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft completed a firing of
its onboard rocket motors earlier today. The maneuver began at 1 p.m.
PDT (4 p.m. EDT), lasted 71 seconds, and changed its velocity by 4.5 mph
(2 meters per second). The rocket burn was performed to keep the
venerable comet hunter's options open for yet another exploration of a
solar system small body, this time a possible future visit to a small
near-Earth asteroid called 2002 GT.

Deep Impact was launched in January 2005. On July 3, 2005, the
spacecraft deployed an impactor that was "run over" by the nucleus of
comet Tempel 1 on July 4 while the main spacecraft imaged the event.
Sixteen days after that comet encounter, the Deep Impact team placed the
spacecraft on a trajectory to complete a bonus mission. The extended
mission of the Deep Impact spacecraft culminated in the successful flyby
of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 4, 2010.

To date, Deep Impact has traveled about 4.2 billion miles (6.75 billion
kilometers) in space.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
manages the Deep Impact mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
Washington. The mission is 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.

For more information about Deep Impact, visit:
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/deepimpact.

DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle at jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
Dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov

2012-313
Received on Thu 04 Oct 2012 08:01:12 PM PDT