The Stardust-NExT spacecraft successfully completed its flyby of comet Tempel 1 on Monday. Related press releases are on the Stardust-NExT web site. 72 images were taken during the flyby, which can be seen here and here. A few are posted below.




Tempel 1 was first visited by the Deep Impact mission in 2005, which also “hit” the comet with an impactor, creating a small crater which can still be seen today, and was photographed by Stardust-NExT:

This is the last planned encounter for the spacecraft, as it is now running out of fuel. It had previously visited the comet Wild 2 and returned samples to Earth for analysis in 2006 before continuing on to Tempel 1. Not bad!