National Aeronautics and Space Administration University of Maryland Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology Credits & Awards Contact Us Privacy Statement
spacer image
spacer
UMD ASTRONOMY spacer STUDENT INFO spacer UMD OBSERVATORY spacer PDS-SBN spacer BIMA
spacer
Deep Impact
Deep Impact
Home Search Sitemap Frequently Asked Questions Contact Us spacer
Deep Impact Mission Science Technology Mission Results Gallery Education Discovery Zone Your Community Press Send Your Name to a Comet!

Thanks to all of you who participated in our Send Your Name to a Comet campaign. You were part of an incredible adventure to see what lies beneath the surface of a comet.

What is the Send Your Name to a Comet campaign?

Glad you asked! From Aug 2003 through Jan 2004, this project collected more than 650,000 names that were placed on a small disc and mounted on the impactor. As we made a Deep Impact - so did many of you as your names collided with comet Tempel 1. The Deep Impact mission dug deep beneath the surface of a comet to release frozen ice and dust left over from the formation of the solar system. Why did we do it? We learn about comets by studying the ice and dust that flows naturally from a comet as it is warmed by the Sun. But we can learn additional information by getting down inside where the more pristine material is hidden. Scientists expected to find hidden clues about how the solar system formed. On July 2005, the Deep Impact twin spacecraft encountered comet Tempel 1 with a resulting crater that gave us new information about comets.

Searching for your certificate

Our database is currently down. Therefore the search function has been disabled.

Some hints for finding your certificate (when the database is back up).

Send Your Name to...

Are you sure you participated in the Send Your Name to a Comet campaign? Deep Impact was not the first or only mission to collect names to send into space. Several of the Mars missions, Stardust, Dawn and others have also collected names. If you don't remember which mission you submitted your name to, you can try searching:



redbar-bottom
spacer
spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer
spacer FirstGov - Your First Click to the U.S. Government   spacer
Web Curator: Maura Rountree-Brown
Webmaster: Elizabeth Warner
Last Updated: Tuesday November 14, 2017
Web Accessibility
Clearance No. CL 01-0944
spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer