Two U.S. spacecraft are set to crash on the moon Friday. On purpose. And we're all invited to watch.
NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite is scheduled to drop its Centaur upper-stage rocket on the lunar surface at 7:31 a.m. ET.
NASA hopes the impact will kick up enough dust to help the LCROSS probe find the presence of water in the moon's soil. Four minutes later, the LCROSS will follow through the debris plume, collecting and relaying data back to Earth before crashing into the Cabeus crater near the moon's south pole.
The LCROSS is carrying spectrometers, near-infrared cameras, a visible camera and a visible radiometer. These instruments will help NASA scientists analyze the plume of dust -- more than 250 metric tons' worth -- for water vapor. Video See how moon will be 'bombed' »
The orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will watch, and photograph, the collisions. And hundreds of telescopes on Earth also will be focused on the two plumes.
NASA is encouraging amateur astronomers to join the watch party.
"We expect the debris plumes to be visible through midsized backyard telescopes -- 10 inches and larger," said Brian Day at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California. Day is an amateur astronomer who is leading education and public outreach for the LCROSS mission.
"The initial explosions will probably be hidden behind crater walls, but the plumes will rise high enough above the crater's rim to be seen from Earth," he said. The Cabeus crater lies in permanent shadow, making observations inside the crater difficult.
The impacts will not be visible to the naked eye or through binoculars. If you don't have a telescope, or you live in areas where daylight will obscure the viewing, NASA TV will broadcast the crashes live. Coverage begins at 6:15 a.m. ET Friday.
via NASA set to crash on the moon -- twice - CNN.com.
Hmmm. Wonder what they are really going to destroy on the moon. ;-)
Update:
NASA: Lunar crashes won't hurt the moon.
The moon is due for a double whammy from two NASA probes Friday, with scientists assuring some skeptics that smacking the lunar surface with spacecraft is really okay.
NASA's LCROSS mission will slam a spacecraft and an empty rocket stage into the moon's south pole Friday morning at 7:31 a.m. EDT (1131 GMT) in a search for water ice buried in the perpetual shadows of lunar craters.
Scientists are eagerly awaiting the LCROSS crashes and hope they'll provide a definitive answer on whether lunar water ice could be used to support future astronauts on the moon. But at least one person — novelist and screenwriter Amy Ephron — has spoken out against the $79 million mission on her Huffington Post blog and launched a Twitter campaign ("helpsavethemoon") to save the moon from future onslaught.
"I'm not a big fan of explosions, anyway. In Iraq or Afghanistan or the South Pole of the Moon. But who does have a territorial prerogative there?" Ephron wrote. "Who has jurisdiction? Who has the right to say that it's okay to blow up a crater on the moon?"
Apparently, Mother Nature does. The moon is covered in craters, with new ones like those to be created by the LCROSS probes popping up all the time by meteorites that pummel the lunar surface.
"The image of this impact, what we're doing with the moon, is something that occurs naturally four times a month on the moon, whether we're there or not," LCROSS principal investigator Tony Colaprete told reporters Thursday.
... - via MSNBC
9 comments:
dumb question, I guess. I know these scientists think of everything but- will this in any way affect our weather? Doesn't the moon have to do with the tide, etc? Dumb question but I would really appreciate an intelligent answer.
attack the moon, we will see it with telescopes.
I am so scared I can't believe this.
The moon is huge. The moon's gravity influences the Earths' tides, but there will be no change in our weather as a result of this experiment ... unless, of course, there are aliens or a secret group of humans on the moon and the NASA attack causes them to retaliate. Perhaps they are already unleashing earthquakes on us and that is why NASA is striking back. In that case our weather will get better after NASA hits the moon. Time will tell.
Nothing to fear, probably.
So - millions are set to run out of unemployment support, Medicare is going to be broke in a couple of decades, we are borrowing money from China in stupendous amounts - and we are wasting how many millions to crash something into the moon???
And supposedly to find water???
I wonder how far the money the bozo's who thought this stupid mission up would go towards building a saline-desalization plant to get water from the ocean??
Without a doubt - this is one of the most stupid wastes of taxpayer and other monies ever thought up by egghead scientists and whoever else was in this.
If a Corporation was guilty of absurd waste of taxpayer money - there would be yells and screams of our elected leaders (?), reports by the GAO, watchdog groups cryhing for blood, and senate hearings with all sort of talking heads and posturing politicians all anxious to be on the television denouncing this massive waste.
The word that comes to mind regarding this entire project is FUBAR !!!!
I would rather blow up the moon than give poor people medicine, AND I VOTE.
Besides, this shit is awesome.
I think we need to learn everything we can about our local system. So far there is a lot of diversity and we are only begining to understand what is out there. Someday we may need an alternative to living on the earth. It will take a long time to master life in our solar system without the earth. Much longer for life to leave our not so safe corner of the galexy. Space exploration may be the most important undertaking of mankind. If you don't belive me, ask your great great...etc grandchild the day an 2000 mile wide asteroid hits the earth.
o ya then they may destroy the earth too
o ya then we r in trouble ya
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