Who came up with the idea to impact a comet?
The idea of impacting a comet has been around for a long time and has been seriously discussed as the ending scenario for orbiter missions. The idea dates back at least 30 years to the book 2001 written by Arthur C. Clarke. Mission teams from a variety of other missions have studied the concept, including the team of the Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby (CRAF) mission that was subsequently cancelled by NASA in the mid 1990’s and the team of the Giotto mission (which was flown by ESA to comet Halley). The Deep Impact project was first proposed in a somewhat different form and rejected in 1996. In 1998 the team re-proposed the idea with a number of changes and on the basis of this proposal was one of two Discovery missions ultimately selected in July 1999.
