Deep Impact Spacecraft Eyes the Moon
Four days after launch from Cape Canaveral on January 12, 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft pointed at the Moon to test its telescopes, cameras and spectrometer. This image was taken on January 16, 2005, with the Medium Resolution Imager (MRI). It was a 9.5 sec exposure. The spacecraft was more than 1.65 million kilometers (1.02 million miles) from the Moon, and a little more than 1.27 million kilometers (789,000 miles) from Earth. The spacecraft is scheduled to impact comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD
Deep Impact Looks at Jupiter
An old favorite, Jupiter, was observed by Deep Impact on February 6, 2005, with its high resolution imager (HRI). Jupiter was over 728,000,000 million kilometers (more than 452,000,000 million miles) away from the spacecraft. The North Polar Region, North Equatorial Belt, South Equatorial Belt and South Polar Region can be seen as dark regions and bands. The light regions are the tropical and equatorial zones.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD
