NASA Set To Bomb Moon Where The Sun Don't Shine
Lunar Denizons Flee For Their Lives From Crater Cabeus A
"NASA scientists announced Friday that they had picked a 60-mile-wide crater near the moon's south pole as the place where they will send a rocket to punch a hole in the lunar surface next month in search of water.
Instruments aboard other satellites and on Earth have detected a significant amount of hydrogen, a telltale marker for water, on the northwest rim of the crater known as Cabeus A.
"We're very confident we're going to hit a good place," Anthony Colaprete, lead scientist for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, mission, said at a briefing at Ames Research Center in Mountain View.
LCROSS consists of a small satellite and an accompanying rocket launched two months ago with a second spacecraft, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Shortly after launch, the two spacecraft separated. While the lunar orbiter is using its instruments to map the moon remotely in search water traces, the smaller LCROSS satellite and its rocket are scheduled to plunge into the moon's surface on Oct. 9.
If all goes according to plan, scientists say, the giant cloud of dust sent wafting over the lunar surface will contain traces of water in the form of ice.
The moon has long been thought to be a dead, dry world -- a place, in the words of astronaut Buzz Aldrin, of "magnificent desolation." But some scientists have suggested that water ice millions of years old might be found in the shadowed craters of the north and south poles, where the sun never shines."
NASA's LCROSS mission observation page, where you can keep track of this expensive silliness.
"NASA scientists announced Friday that they had picked a 60-mile-wide crater near the moon's south pole as the place where they will send a rocket to punch a hole in the lunar surface next month in search of water.
Instruments aboard other satellites and on Earth have detected a significant amount of hydrogen, a telltale marker for water, on the northwest rim of the crater known as Cabeus A.
"We're very confident we're going to hit a good place," Anthony Colaprete, lead scientist for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, mission, said at a briefing at Ames Research Center in Mountain View.
LCROSS consists of a small satellite and an accompanying rocket launched two months ago with a second spacecraft, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Shortly after launch, the two spacecraft separated. While the lunar orbiter is using its instruments to map the moon remotely in search water traces, the smaller LCROSS satellite and its rocket are scheduled to plunge into the moon's surface on Oct. 9.
If all goes according to plan, scientists say, the giant cloud of dust sent wafting over the lunar surface will contain traces of water in the form of ice.
The moon has long been thought to be a dead, dry world -- a place, in the words of astronaut Buzz Aldrin, of "magnificent desolation." But some scientists have suggested that water ice millions of years old might be found in the shadowed craters of the north and south poles, where the sun never shines."
NASA's LCROSS mission observation page, where you can keep track of this expensive silliness.
posted by nolocontendere at 5:23 AM
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