"Geez, and we thought it was going to be subtle," exulted JPL scientist Don Yeomans, one of the Deep Impact science team. "That was considerably brighter, and had considerably more material coming out, than I had expected," he said.
"We are just ecstatic," said JPL director Charles Elachi of the success of the $330 million mission. "It was worth every penny we spent on it."
The aim of the cosmic collision was to punch a hole in the comet's crusty surface to release material from below, revealing details about the interior of comets. These bodies of ice and dust a few kilometres across are believed to contain primordial material, preserved since the formation of the solar system in the deep-freeze of space.
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