Deep Space 1 Completes Comet Fly-by

Saint Aardvark writes: "All right...Space.com is reporting here that NASA's Deep Space 1 probe successfully made it through Comet Borrelly -- pretty good for a spacecraft using up the last of its fuel, 'way past its expected lifetime, doing something it wasn't designed to do'. About 30 pix are being downloaded right now, and there's a press conference planned for Tuesday. In the meantime, read NASA's press release here. Way to go, DS-1 and NASA!"

Comments

Darn it wasn't supposed to make it!

[WolfWithoutAClause]

NASA now have a policy of destroying their equipment at the end of missions. Otherwise they find that the budget for the mission gets extended and takes away from the other missions they want to fund. I got the impression that this was another 'let's see if we can kill this thing' mission.

Of course the operators usually try to arrange it that the thing makes it through somehow...