This image shows NASA's Deep Impact impactor spacecraft while it was
being built at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation, Boulder, Colo.
On July 2, at 10:52 p.m. Pacific time (1:52 a.m. Eastern time, July 3),
the impactor will be released from Deep Impact's flyby spacecraft. One day
later, it will collide with Tempel 1. The impactor cannot directly talk to
Earth, so it will communicate via the flyby spacecraft during its final
day.
The two spacecraft communicate at "S-band" frequency. The impactor's
S-band antenna is the rectangle-shaped object seen on the top of the
impactor in this image.