This pair of images shows the before-and-after comparison of the part of comet Tempel 1 that was hit by the impactor from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft.

The left-hand image is a composite made from images obtained by Deep Impact in July 2005. The right-hand image shows the same region as viewed by NASA's Stardust spacecraft six years later, on Feb. 14, 2011. See the annotated version of this image at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stardust/multimedia/Schultz4.html .

Stardust-NExT is a low-cost mission that is expanding the investigation of comet Tempel 1 initiated by NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages Stardust-NExT for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. Joe Veverka of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., is the mission's principal investigator. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft and manages day-to-day mission operations.