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PIA02138: Wipe Out
This image of the surface of comet Tempel 1 was taken about 20 seconds before NASA's Deep Impact's probe crashed into the comet on July 3, 2005. This particular region contains the impact site.
 Target Name:  Tempel 1
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Deep Impact 
 Spacecraft:  Deep Impact
 Instrument:  Impactor Targeting Sensor (ITS) 
 Product Size:  247 x 241 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  University of Maryland 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA02138.tif (59.82 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA02138.jpg (6.405 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

This image of the surface of comet Tempel 1 was taken about 20 seconds before Deep Impact's probe crashed into the comet at 10:52 p.m. Pacific time, July 3. This particular region contains the impact site.

The bright patches in the image may consist of very smooth and reflective material, the composition of which will be determined by Deep Impact's spectrometer. Dark areas are in shadow and provide information about surface topography. Higher terrain appears rough relative to lower areas that appear very smooth. Is this a layered surface? And how did the smooth regions form? These are some of the questions the science team plans to address.

This image was taken by the probe's impactor targeting sensor.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD

Image Addition Date:
2005-07-06