Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 March 2006
The Deep Impact mission delivered 19 gigajoules of kinetic energy to the nucleus of comet 9P/Tempel 1 on 4 July 2005. Intensive observations, both from the two spacecraft and from Earth and Earth-orbit, while approaching the comet led to numerous new findings about comets. Observations of the impact event, from the flyby spacecraft have led us to a determination of numerous physical properties of the nucleus. Analysis of the near-IR spectra is still very preliminary.