> Millions of miles from Earth, one half of a robotic space probe the
> size of a compact car was spending its Fourth of July holiday preparing to
> slam at 10 times the speed of a rifle bullet into an ancient ball of ice
> and
> rock variously described by mission scientists as a nine-mile-long
> "pickle"
> and "eggplant."
>
> Meanwhile, hundreds of Cornell University students, faculty and
> Ithaca
> citizens were spending the wee hours of Independence Day cramming
> themselves
> into rooms on the first and third floors of Cornell's Space Sciences
> Building (SSB). It was there on a warm summer night that they hoped to
> witness a historic event, as a machine named Deep Impact had a very close
> encounter with a comet named Tempel 1. They also came for the ice cream.

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14811016&BRD=1395&PAG=461&dept_id=216620&rfi=6