I remember like 4-5 years ago I came home from work on a Friday, nothing to do, nothing good going on that night. Started flipping through the tv and came across the NASA channel about t-minus 60 minutes before they were going to slam some space probe into a comet waaaay deep in space. They had launched the probe like 3 years before!
Me and my roommate grabbed some beers and watched the whole thing unfold. We got totally into it. It was a live feed from the NASA control center. Awesome geek central. They've got the craziest jobs. Like one guy in charged of Left Thrust Booster B, one guy in charged of double checking Trajectory Calculations...there were like 50 people all in charged of very specific tasks.
At about t-minus 15 minutes to impact, the team had ONE chance to adjust the trajectory to insure impact...3 years culminating to this one moment that would basically consist of firing one of the boosters for 2 seconds. We could tell that they got it right when the control room burst into celebration.
Then it was just a matter of watching. The probe returned a photo about once every 30 seconds. So the comet got closer and closer until the probe was like a few hundred feet off its surface. And then boom! The control room celebrates again, I think there was some champagne...we celebrated too for some reason. Every 30 seconds another pic of the impact...very cool stuff.
I don't even remember why they were doing it...I think they were trying to gauge the effects of massive impacts or something...I think it was cooler than this moon business.
EDIT: Found video of the impact...it was more impressive within the context of all the drama leading up to the moment.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eIY_9u- … r_embedded[/youtube]