NASA Deep Impact: Contact With Comet-Hunting Spacecraft Lost

An artist's conception show's a close-up look at NASA's comet-hunting Deep Impact spacecraft.

Credit: Nasa

NASA's veteran Deep Impact probe may have chased its last comet.

The spacecraft's handlers lost contact with Deep Impact — which slammed an impactor into Comet Tempel 1 in 2005, made a close flyby of Comet Hartley 2 in 2010 and recently observed ISON, a "comet of the century" candidate — sometime between Aug. 11 and Aug. 14, mission team members announced last Tuesday (Sept. 3).

"The last communication was on August 8. After considerable effort, the team on August 30 determined the cause of the problem," principal investigator Mike A'Hearn of the University of Maryland wrote in a brief mission update Tuesday.

"The team is now trying to determine how best to try to recover communication."



The issue stems from a software glitch that reset Deep Impact's computer, A'Hearn told reporters at prestigious scientific journal Nature.

Things are serious, he added: Deep Impact is apparently spinning out of control after recent attempts to put the probe into hibernation mode were unsuccessful.

It's unclear how much time the mission team has to bring Deep Impact back in line. Depending on how the probe's solar panels are oriented, Deep Impact's batteries could run out of juice in a matter of days or keep going for several months.

"How long we have depends on the state the spacecraft is in, and we don't yet know that," A'Hearn told reporters. "Could be that it is too late already — could be we have another month or more."

Deep Impact launched in January 2005 on a mission to rendezvous with Comet Tempel 1. In July of that year, the spacecraft sucessfully smashed an impactor into Tempel 1, allowing scientists to study the icy object's composition.