PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) - A spectacular collision between a spacecraft and a comet has freed a huge plume of primordial material from the comet's nucleus that could unlock the secret of how life arrived on Earth, NASA scientists said on Monday.
The first images returned from the Deep Impact fly-by spacecraft showed a small fireball followed by a much larger, incandescent flash that engulfed one end of the comet Tempel 1 as the impactor smashed into its surface at 1:52 a.m. EDT (0552 GMT) on Monday.
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