I saw an article over on Astrobiology Magazine titled "Hunting Earths
with EPOXI - NASA's Deep Impact Begins Hunt for Alien Worlds"
at
http://astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=articl...

Their article summary
"New Planets Summary (Feb 12, 2008): In 2005, NASA's Deep Impact
spacecraft directed an impactor into comet Tempel 1 and collected
valuable information about the composition of comets. Now the
spacecraft is turning its largest telescope toward the stars in order
to search for exosolar planets."

Their article was based on a NASA news release at

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/epoxi/epoxi-20080207.html

which appears below

"NASA's Deep Impact Begins Hunt for Alien Worlds
02.07.08

(artist concept artwork appears of the Deep Impact spacecraft (now
called EPOXI).  Image  caption "NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft is
aiming its largest telescope at five stars in a search for alien
(exosolar) planets as it enters its extended mission, called Epoxi.")

Deep Impact made history when the mission team directed an impactor
from the spacecraft into comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005. NASA recently
extended the mission, redirecting the spacecraft for a flyby of comet
Hartley 2 on Oct. 11, 2010.

As it cruises toward the comet, Deep Impact will observe five nearby
stars with "transiting exosolar planets," so named because the planet
transits, or passes in front of, its star. The Epoxi team, led by
University of Maryland astronomer Michael A'Hearn, directed the
spacecraft to begin these observations Jan. 22. The planets were
discovered earlier and are giant planets with massive atmospheres,
like Jupiter in our solar system. They orbit their stars much closer
than Earth does the sun, so they are hot and belong to the class of
exosolar planets nicknamed "Hot Jupiters."

However, these giant planets may not be alone. If there are other
worlds around these stars, they might also transit the star and be
discovered by the spacecraft. Deep Impact can even find planets that
don't transit, using a timing technique. Gravity from the unseen
planets will pull on the transiting planets, altering their orbits and
the timing of their transits.

"We're on the hunt for planets down to the size of Earth, orbiting
some of our closest neighboring stars," said Epoxi Deputy Principal
Investigator Drake Deming of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md. Epoxi is a combination of the names for the two
extended mission components: the exosolar planet observations, called
Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization (Epoch), and the
flyby of comet Hartley 2, called the Deep Impact Extended
Investigation (Dixi). Goddard leads the Epoch component.

More than 200 exosolar planets have been discovered to date. Most of
these are detected indirectly, by the gravitational pull they exert on
their parent star. Directly observing exosolar planets by detecting
the light reflected from them is very difficult, because a star's
brilliance obscures light coming from any planets orbiting it.

However, sometimes the orbit of an exosolar world is aligned so that
it eclipses its star as seen from Earth. In these rare cases, called
transits, light from that planet can be seen directly.

"When the planet appears next to its star, your telescope captures
their combined light. When the planet passes behind its star, your
telescope only sees light from the star. By subtracting light from
just the star from the combined light, you are left with light from
the planet," said Deming, who is leading the search for exosolar
worlds with Deep Impact. "We can analyze this light to discover what
the atmospheres of these planets are like."

Deep Impact will also look back to observe Earth in visible and
infrared wavelengths, allowing comparisons with future discoveries of
Earth-like planets around other stars.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages Epoxi for
NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The University of
Maryland is the Principal Investigator institution. NASA Goddard leads
the mission's exosolar planet observations. The spacecraft was built
for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.

For information about Epoxi, visit http://www.nasa.gov/epoxi . More
information about JPL is at www.jpl.nasa.gov . More information about
NASA programs is at www.nasa.gov ."
__________________________________________________________________________

Keep searching, Jason H.
http://setisociety.org