Fourth of July Comet Coverage

Celestial fireworks from pending Fourth of July comet smash likely to drive big crowds to NASA's Web portal, similar to that of the Mars Rover mission.

Akamai Technologies, Inc. and eTouch systems are providing extra bandwidth for the space agency’s Deep Impact spacecraft mission, which is set to launch a projectile into the surface of comet Tempel 1 during the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

NASA will be Webcasting live a pre-impact briefing at 1 p.m. EDT on July 1 and a pre-impact update at 1 p.m. EDT on July 3. The expected time of impact is 1:52 a.m. EDT July 4. A post-impact briefing will be held at 4 a.m. July 4. A post-impact press conference will follow at 2 p.m. EDT July 4.

There have been more than 23 billion hits to NASA’s Web portal since the twin Mars Rover missions landed on the Red Planet in January of 2004. Since that time, NASA has experienced 200 million visitor sessions viewing more than 2.3 billion pages.

The Deep Impact comet collision should be visible with the aid of binoculars to millions of people here on Earth in the early morning hours of U.S. Independence Day. Viewers in the United States living west of the Mississippi and in Hawaii, and people in New Zealand will have the best opportunity to witness the event.