By Ben Harder
Operating on a makeshift navigation system and performing an extra mission assigned on the fly, NASA’s Deep Space 1 probe (DS1) has executed a stunning rendezvous with a comet.
The probe passed within 2,200 kilometers of Comet Borrelly’s frozen nucleus and through the comet’s coma of dust and gas. During the fly-by, DS1 captured black-and-white and infrared images of the nucleus as well as data about ions and other particles that radiate from it.