Deep Impact: mission design approach for a new Discovery mission

Deep Impact is a new NASA Discovery mission to launch in early 2004. This paper discusses the mission design strategies for this unique mission, which will target a 500-kg impactor into a comet nucleus at a speed of 10 km/s, in order to reveal the subsurface materials and structure. Trajectory designs are shown for reaching comet P/Tempel 1 near perihelion at its 2005 apparition and for the approach and flyby trajectories of the flyby spacecraft, which carries the impactor up to 24 h before impact. The mission and encounter timelines are discussed for the events of the cruise, approach, and encounter phases of the mission, including the strategies for observing the impact and returning the data to Earth. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.