Deep Impact Successful

Houston Chronicle reported It sounded like science fiction — NASA scientists used a space probe to chase down a speeding comet 83 million miles away and slammed it into the frozen ball of dirty ice and debris in a mission to learn how the solar system was formed. The unmanned probe of the Deep Impact mission collided with Tempel 1, a pickle-shaped comet half the size of Manhattan, late Sunday as thousands of people across the country fixed their eyes to the southwestern sky for a glimpse. The impact at 10:52 p.m. PDT was cause for celebration not only to scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, but also for the more than 10,000 people camped out at Hawaii's Waikiki Beach to watch it on a giant movie screen.



blogged There are two bits of extraordinary magic here.

• Magic No. 1: Humans have designed a machine that has found a small, specific chunk of rock 83 million miles away from our home planet and hit it with a projectile. Why? Just to see what's inside.
• Magic No. 2: Back home, the entire planet can see photos of Magic No. 1, thanks to a communications system that covers the globe, on TV or over the Internet.

We do indeed live in astonishing times.

Congratulations NASA.