Deep Impact was launched on Jan. 12, 2005, on a solar orbit to rendezvous with Comet Tempel 1. The spacecraft had two primary sections, the impactor and the flyby spacecraft. The impactor was built around a copper and aluminum mass with a small, guided propulsive stage. The comet's constituents could be identified from the spectral makeup of the vaporized ejecta. The mass and velocity would allow scientists to deduce the structure of the comet from the crater that was formed. The Impactor Targeting Sensor doubled as an experiment camera during final approach. The flyby spacecraft carried two primary instruments, high- and medium-resolution imagers, with the radio system used as a third experiment to measure possible velocity changes due to the comet's mass or atmospheric drag. The imagers had filters to highlight diatomic carbon and cyanogen molecules (molecule) in the debris. An infrared (infrared radiation) spectrometer was designed to detect water, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide.

The impactor was released on July 3, 2005, and struck the comet 24 hours later at a speed of 37,000 km (23,000 miles) per hour. The flyby spacecraft flew to within 500 km (300 miles) of Comet Tempel 1. The nucleus of Comet Tempel 1 was found to be highly porous. The impact was observed by telescopes on Earth, as well as from satellite observatories (satellite observatory) such as the Hubble (Hubble Space Telescope) and Spitzer Space Telescopes (Spitzer Space Telescope).

The primary mission ended in August 2005. The extended mission, for which Deep Impact was renamed EPOXI, has cruise and hibernation phases, the latter to conserve propellant and funding (mainly for operations on Earth). In the DIXI mission, EPOXI was to fly past Comet Boethin, but this comet had not been seen since 1986, so EPOXI was retargeted for Comet Hartley 2, with a flyby scheduled for Oct. 11, 2010. Retargeting was accomplished by trimming the trajectory during EPOXI's flyby of Earth on Dec. 31, 2007. In the EPOCh part of the EPOXI mission, the high-resolution imager is used to observe the transits (transit) of three extrasolar planets (extrasolar planet) and to search for other planets (planet) around those stars (star).