Epoxi, the Recycled NASA Robot Mission
Riding with Robots brings us a neat story of how NASA has recycled one of their missions, and turned it into another. The EPOXI (Extrasolar Planet Observation and Deep Impact Extended Investigation) mission utilizes the main vehicle from the Deep Impact mission to performan another series of experiments which will perform a close (600 miles) fly-by of the comet Hartley 2 on October 11, 2010. During its trip to Hartley 2, the space probe will pass by Earth a total of 4 times and is currently in a solar orbit. The probe uses Earth's gravity to gently nudge it into the path of the comet. The mission, which is being run by the University of Maryland, will only end up costing tax-payers $40 million USD (compared to $330 million USD cost of Deep Impact).
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