Looking Inside the Impactor Spacecraft
Integration and Test Sr. Technician Rod Gillard checks the configuration of the Impactor's Spacecraft Control Unit (SCU) at Ball Aerospace & Technology Corporation's facility in Boulder, CO. The Deep Impact team is completing the final checkout of the Impactor spacecraft prior to the start of the Environmental Test program early next year. This image shows the impactor spacecraft with its moments of inertia (MOI) shell removed. Visible in the photo are the SCU (white box on top), the Instrument electronics (black rectangle in foreground), the battery enclosure (gold box to the left of the SCU), the ITS telescope assembly (gold box to the right of the SCU), the Spacecraft Inertial Reference Unit (SIRU) (black square to the right of the instrument electronics), the star tracker (black circular cone at the rear), and the thruster nozzles (foreground with red caps).
CREDIT: Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.
