The Deep Impact mission has passed another milestone on its road toward a January 2004 launch and a July 2005 encounter with a speeding comet.

Deep Impact successfully completed a three-day critical design review in early February. After examining details of the mission, three independent review boards concluded that the design is mature and ready to proceed to building and testing the project's two spacecraft.

"This was a major step for us in ensuring both ourselves and NASA that our designs are solid and reliable," said Principal Investigator Michael A'Hearn of the Univeristy of Maryland. "It is truly exciting to see the first pieces of hardware beginning to arrive at Ball Aerospace and to realize that we are well on our way."

Deep Impact will intercept comet Tempel 1 in July of 2005. Its flyby spacecraft will release a 770-pound impactor that will excavate a large crater in the comet's nucleus, allowing both the flyby spacecraft and Earth-based observers to study the differences between the surface material and the interior of the cometary nucleus.

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