NASA spacecraft set to rendezvous with comet

Artist drawing of Deep Impact Spacecraft chasing a comet

LOS ANGELES – Five years after a NASA spacecraft bombarded a comet, it will visit another one Thursday. This time, there won't be celestial fireworks. 

Since September, Deep Impact has been stalking Hartley 2 like a paparazzo, taking images every 5 minutes and gathering data. Already, scientists have learned that the comet is quite spunky, releasing more gas outbursts than some of its bigger counterparts.
Hartley 2 passed within 11 million miles of Earth on Oct. 20 — the closest it has been to our planet since its discovery in 1986. Space.com