Emily Lakdawalla • Nov 02, 2011
Deep Impact goes for the deep sky
I love it when old spacecraft get pushed to perform feats that weren't part of their original missions. Today, the EPOXI mission -- which (then named Deep Impact) originally flew past Tempel 1, then used one out-of-focus camera to study extrasolar planets, then was retargeted to comet Hartley 2 last year -- posted some neat deep-sky images taken as a part of an operational training exercise. Deep Impact is capable of a second extended mission, but what it is hasn't been decided yet. Clearly, there are a lot of things that this spacecraft is capable of doing!
![NGC 6960, The Veil Nebula](https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/_1200x499_crop_center-center_82_line/69241/20140414_NGC6960_Clear_stitch-lg.jpg 1200w, https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/_768x319_crop_center-center_60_line/69241/20140414_NGC6960_Clear_stitch-lg.jpg 768w, https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/_576x239_crop_center-center_60_line/69241/20140414_NGC6960_Clear_stitch-lg.jpg 576w)
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