Kamikaze moon mission kicks up dust, maybe ice?
In a brute-force search for ice on the moon, an empty 5,000-pound rocket stage traveling twice as fast as a rifle bullet crashed into a permanently shadowed crater near the moon's south pole Friday, presumably blasting out tons of debris for examination by an instrumented probe that carried out its own kamikaze plunge four minutes later.
While the initial impact at 4:31 a.m. PDT did not prove especially dramatic--it was not even visible in real-time video from the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS)--scientists said a camera sensitive to temperature variations clearly recorded the flash of the Centaur rocket's catastrophic crash.
Three successively zoomed-in views showing the impact of a Centaur rocket stage in a dark crater on the moon as viewed by NASA's LCROSS probe minutes before its own destruction.
(Credit: NASA)More important, spectroscopic data indicated the presence of material of some sort above or near the impact point in a murky crater known as Cabeus, and instruments aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter observed the Centaur crater and confirmed a plume of debris. But it was not immediately clear how extensive the plume was or how much material was blasted out.
Principal investigator Anthony Colaprete said it would take several days to analyze the data from the $79 million LCROSS experiment and reach a consensus on whether or not water ice was, or was not, detected.
"Life is full of surprises, we want to be careful and not make a false negative or a false positive claim," he told reporters after the impact. "I'm excited we saw variations in the spectra because that means we saw something, and it was not just blackness. The information's there, we just need to get to it."
Asked if he had seen anything in the initial data to indicate the presence of ice, Colaprete said he had not yet had time to look for the telltale signals.
"We're going to take our time and build up a case for water in the ejecta, if it's there, or a case against it if it's not there," he said. "And then understand if we're seeing variations, what do these variations mean? We've got to understand that before we say anything."
Interestingly, a closeup of the thermal flash of the Centaur impact showed an elongated smear of light and not a concentrated flare as one might expect from a near straight-in impact. Colaprete said his team would look into what that might mean. Topographic data collected by other satellites indicated a relatively flat floor where the impact occurred.
LCROSS was launched June 18 as a companion payload to NASA's $504 million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. Working in a 31-mile-high orbit, LRO is designed to create a high-resolution map of the moon's surface to help identify sites for future manned missions.
It also will measure the solar and cosmic radiation that future lunar explorers will face, and map out the surface topology, mineralogy, and chemical composition of Earth's nearest neighbor. One year will be spent scouting future landing sites, followed by three years of purely scientific observations.
While LRO was launched directly to the moon by a powerful Atlas 5 rocket, LCROSS and the booster's empty Centaur upper stage were sent into a looping four-month orbit back around the Earth.
The spacecraft was designed to aim itself and the attached Centaur stage back at the moon, targeting a permanently shadowed crater near the south pole. Mission managers initially selected a crater known as Cabeus A, but after additional analysis of topographic data, the target was switched to nearby Cabeus, a crater measuring some 62 miles across and about 2.5 miles deep.
LCROSS successfully separated from the Centaur stage at 9:50 p.m. Thursday and then rotated 180 degrees to aim its instruments forward. A small rocket firing slowed LCROSS to ensure the proper four-minute separation from the Centaur.
Analysis of telemetry indicated the trajectory was right on the money--the Centaur is believed to have hit the surface within about 210 feet of the planned target--and LCROSS presumably flew through an ejecta cloud of some sort.
"Everything really worked out well," Colaprete said earlier. "The spacecraft flew perfectly, the instruments performed, honestly, better than expected in some cases. We got interesting results. But again, these are just initial results...I can certainly report there was an impact, we saw the impact, we saw the crater and we got good measurements, spectroscopic measurements, which is what we needed of the impact event.
"So we have the data we need to actually address the questions we set out to address."
The search for water ice on the moon is one of the holy grails of modern lunar exploration. Data from other spacecraft, including the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, show the presence of hydrogen, possibly from water ice, in the top three feet or so of lunar soil. Scientists initially believed ice from comets could be expected primarily in permanently shadowed craters near the moon's poles, but more recent data indicated the presence of trace amounts over broad regions.
"It could be water, it could be methane, it could be hydrocarbons or organics," Colaprete said during a pre-impact briefing. "From a scientific standpoint, this is incredibly important. Whatever the moon has collected over the last 3.5 billion years in terms of water, organics, materials from comets, asteroids, the sun, could be trapped in these pockets on the moon. It's a time capsule, it's a window into the past of the entire inner solar system, of Earth."
Finding ice on the moon could be critical to future exploration or even colonization. With unlimited solar power, ice can be converted into water, oxygen, and hydrogen rocket fuel. Finding ice on the moon also would raise the possibility of similar deposits in similar environments across the solar system.
"Water in terms of exploration is very important," Colaprete said. "Even if we don't go back to the moon, it is a principle resource throughout the solar system. On Mars and beyond. The old Mars mantra was 'follow the water.' And really, that extends in my mind through the entire solar system and the entire universe. And so really, LRO and LCROSS are the first directed, focused steps in that direction on the moon."
William Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He has covered more than 115 shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune, and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of "Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia." You can follow his frequent status updates at the CBSNews.com Space Place, where this story was first published. 
http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/uncategorized/indias-moon-impact-probe-to-hit-lunar-surface-friday_100118670.html
I doubt a nearly invisible impact on the moon, long after a nation suffering widespread poverty had done so, could be interpreted as a show of power. If it shows anything, its how few American's read world news.
While there is an urge to crack a joke about Obama bombing the moon at the same time as winning a Nobel Peace Prize, this is not about showing off.
Here's the deal: If water can be found on the Moon, colonies can be established that much easier (you don't have to lug as much water up from Earth, and you can also generate Oxygen locally). Space transport gets that much easier (you can make your own rocket fuel with it).
The probes were going to die off anyway - just a matter of time. So why not reduce the amount of space junk in orbit and at the same time make 'em do something useful on their way out? Kind of efficient that way, no?
* refining ways of finding potable water in deserts here on Earth (a huge chunk of our population lives in a desert).
* kick-start means of refining water into oxygen and hydrogen (esp. the latter, since everyone seems so interested in making hydrogen-fueled vehicles).
* eventual space colonization, which in turn reduces population pressures here on Earth.
Thoseare just the first three to come to mind. I'm very sure there's more at hand with just a little thought...
-their- newly discovered resources? No one owns the moon yet, thank god.
The US has a flag on it. That claims it as theirs just like the Russians have claimed in the artic by putting a flag on it in which Canada was not pleased since they claim the Arctic as well..
International treaty says no one owns it. Next?
How did a country that was the first to land a man on a celestial body fall so far? What was it? The cutting of education funding? The bible thumpers?
I just don't get it. sad...very very sad.
It's been bad since the '70's. We are still feeling that generation's rejection of technology... now with TWO generations of goodness on that.
Bible thumpers? Hardly. I'm a Baptist deacon... of a long line of deacons. My great-grandfather was a fan of space exploration before Goddard fired his first rocket; back when when we only had Verne's imagination to go off of (and some telescope sightings). My mom still talks about the room he panted that had the solar system up to Saturn on it, with constellations on the ceiling (he was her grandfather, I'm 33, she's sixty, so do the math on how long ago that was). He was a deacon, his son, his granddaughter IS one, and I'm one. Religion doesn't mean one turns one's mind off; indeed, if one takes parts of Genesis literally, we are commanded to explore/colonize ALL of space.
Busch was a result of a certain demographic that has grown into power since the 70's which takes advantage of another demographic (who they make fun of). Kinda a Eloi-Morlock situation, actually, with one subculture using another to gain control of the supra-body. Anyway.
Yeah like we had a such good grasp before Bush. I wish people stop bashing Bush the left can be so mean and unforgiving about the differences they have with people. Just stop he hate and try to live your life.
"Yeah like we had a such good grasp before Bush. I wish people stop bashing Bush the left can be so mean and unforgiving about the differences they have with people. Just stop he hate and try to live your life."
That's right... let's just live our lives and try to remember to NEVER make another national blunder like we did in electing George 'Cheney' Bush... enemy of science, knowledge, progress and enlightenment.
Next thing that happens they are attacked not by one but two missiles.
Question: have we just declared war on the universe?
Question: can we trust any of the results as they may be intermingled with the debris of another sentient race's shelter?
Question: is this why the impact gave off a surprising shaped flash?
Question: Have I been reading too much science fiction?
Seriously although this can be mocked , wow they manage dto hit the moon ! , for what is in reality a very small investment they seem to have the potential to achieve a lot. maybe this is one of the significant messages that there is more focus on value for money ?
me also thinks that given the lack of environment or atmosphere on the moon could it be there is a lack of kinetic energy to produce the plumage we all thought we would see. as we all know now that all the sci-fi space movies have sound to go with the outer space explosions and such other nonsense. remember people this is reality and not some sci-fi show!
So the question now becomes: did we EVER land on the moon? Are the conspiracy theorists correct in stating the moon landings were staged? Because IF we have traveled to the moon before, I don't see why we couldn't do it again. Now I'm starting to believe the conspiracy theorists...
http://mythbustersresults.com/episode-104-nasa-moon-landing
They even found reflective mirrors on the Moon that sent lasers back to the Earth stations to prove that someone went to the Moon to put them there.
I guess one day we will have Google Moon and zoom in on the Moon Landing sites to see equipment we left there.
There were substantial discrepencies found for which there was no explanation for. The myth busters episode which claims that the landing on the moon was real was based on tests that could never simulate what the environment was like on the moon, of which only supercomputers could simulate which is beyond the budget of the show. The show was more for entertainment than anything else. What you need to understand is that there is no atmospehere on earth like the moon even if you could use a vacume chamber, it's not the same.
The combination of having a different gravity field, different atmospheric pressure, different atmospheric composition and its effect on the materials that the space suits were made from, the materials that the flag was made from, etc... could never be simulated without highly complex formulas. Unfortunately the video of the moon walk were so poor, it was difficult to analyse small particle matter such as sand, the impact of the boot and the surface on the moon, and the materials of the spacesuit in regards to how it was effected by the pressure differentials inside and outside. Regardless the video was proven to be a fraud based on what information we currently have.
Why don't we ask Nasa, why is it that you could send someone to the moon 40 years ago, that you can't send someone there now? With all the technological advancements, why does it cost substantially more to send someone there now to a point where it is so expensive that it took more than 10 years of research and development which hasn't even got you close to achieving that goal? why couldn't you use the same technology used then and simply use the same schematics and materials, assuming that we were so much smarted then than we are now?
There can only be one reason why anyone with intelligence would want to use this technique. To destroy anything that was in that crator so that other countries such as China or India who had exploration plans on the moon would have no chance of finding anything. There is nothing else that would justify the use of this technique. Although the rocket was not a bomb, it's impact would have been greater and there would be enough rocket fuel left to incinerate anything in the range of hundreds of meters, leaving absolutely nothing behind.
Or we can take the alternative view, that the scientists in charge of this investigation are primitive apes that couldn't think of anything better except to blow something up. Sounds more like terrorism than science to me, maybe NASA should have more thorough background checks on it's scientists. Perhaps a sanity check would be more appropriate.
Anyway, It's funny how the post is about the kamikaze mission (and quite pointless at this point IMO) and people are talking about Bush, philosophic bull****, etc. Although I think it's exciting to know more about other celestial bodies, I'd rather them stop funding organisms like this and give the money to universities where real solutions for real and current problems can be developed.
- by laneetay October 11, 2009 8:59 AM PDT
- we must have looked like damn fools to other beings who happened to be watching. to send a missile that went kaaa blamm into our own backyard, then claim that the blunder was a success. shame, shame on you.....
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (52 Comments)79 million could have fed, clothed and sheltered homeless US citizens. naaaaaa.!