How were the design for the spacecraft and impactor developed?
Carl Buck, Flight Systems Engineer gives an answer. A spacecraft is the culmination of a few very general, and many very detailed requirements. These range from “it has to go to a comet” to “it has to take pictures of the comet nucleus at 3.5 meters resolution.” A spacecraft designed to impact and image a comet has different requirements than one that will softly land a rover on the surface of Mars. For example, the requirements for a fast and agile sports car would be much different than those for an SUV for off-road use. These very general requirements outlining use of the vehicle would result in a lot of other requirements dictating everything from its size and style, to the stiffness of the suspension and type of tires to use. So, in the case of Deep Impact, we were required to design two spacecrafts with very different requirements into one vehicle. We had to design the Impactor to track the comet nucleus for the last twenty-four hours prior to impact. This resulted in the require
