High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! EPOXI is a NASA unmanned space mission led by the University of Maryland using the existing Deep Impact vehicle to begin a new series of observations. It first investigated extrasolar planets and, on November 4, 2010, it performed a close approach to the comet 103P/Hartley (alternately named Hartley 2). The new mission was originally announced on 3 July 2007 as including flyby of comet 85P/Boethin, but Boethin was too small and faint for its orbit to be calculated accurately, so the mission was subsequently retargeted for a 103P/Hartley flyby. NASA and the University of Maryland confirmed funding for the 103P/Hartley flyby in news releases issued on December 13, 2007.