Accessibility links
Betting on Deep Impact's... Impact On the 4th of July, NASA successfully arranged for a probe to get in the way of a comet. The collision produced a huge cloud of debris and reams of data for scientists to study. They now know more about the makeup of comets. But one office pool among the scientists remains unresolved: What did the resulting crater look like?

Analysis

Space

Betting on Deep Impact's... Impact

Heard on All Things Considered

Betting on Deep Impact's... Impact

Listen
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/4815934/4815935" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Comet Tempel 1 strikes the Deep Impact probe, July 4, 2005. A trailing craft photographed the collision. NASA hide caption

toggle caption
NASA

On the 4th of July, NASA successfully arranged for a probe to get in the way of a comet. The collision produced a huge cloud of debris and reams of data for scientists to study. They now know more about the makeup of comets.

But one office pool among the scientists remains unresolved: What did the resulting crater look like?