Hi, kids — I hope everyone out there in InternetLand had a good Fourth of July. The folks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory certainly did. Their Deep Impact space mission (which I previewed for you a month ago) went off without a hitch, slamming its impactor probe into the comet Tempel 1 just before midnight Salt Lake time on Sunday, July 3rd. The boom resulting from an object the size of a washing machine connecting with an object half the size of Manhattan Island at roughly 23,000 miles an hour apparently surprised even the people who designed the probe:

The collision was photographed by the Deep Impact “fly-by spacecraft” (which, conveniently enough, is also the vehicle that released the impactor) as well as the Hubble telescope and a number of other probes, satellites, and observatories. As a result, the Internet today is awash in cool images like the one above. There’s even video taken from the impactor as it approached its final destination. Think back to those missile-cams that so impressed us back during the ’91 Gulf War and you’ll get the idea. If you’re interested in this stuff, you’ll want to start with the mission home page, which includes a gallery of images, video, animation, and artwork. There’s also lots of information about the impactor and the flyby spacecraft, Tempel 1 and comets in general, the technology used to make this happen, and the reasons why scientists thought it would be a good idea to deface one of the other objects in our solar system.