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Friday, October 9, 2009

Re: In About Twelve Hours, We Smash a Part of the Moon

Posted by on Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 1:34 PM

Well, I guess I'm glad that I was too lazy to stay up until 4:30 am or get out of bed at 4:30 am to watch the LCROSS impact on the moon:

NASA's much anticipated LCROSS mission sent two spacecraft "bombing" into the moon early this morning. The craft successfully struck their target, a crater thought to harbor frozen water.

But the much-hyped moon show that had been expected to accompany the impact, however, turned out to be a flop—no billowing plumes of dust and ice visible through backyard telescopes or on NASA TV. The low-impact impact had one NASA expert musing that LCROSS may have struck a "dry hole."
Four minutes later LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) performed its own kamikaze dive—the final act in its mission to detect evidence of water ice in the moon's shadowed craters.

Whether or not sky-watchers could see the LCROSS crashes, NASA insists they happened.

The only video I can find on the thing is sort of long and boring, and contains exactly zero explosions, but here it is:

Anyone else got interesting photos, video, or whatevers on LCROSS, let us know in the comments.

UPDATE: Wise commenter Peter F says:

The plume was pretty much invisible, even through observatory telescopes (haven't seen the Hubble observation yet) but NASA thinks they got the spectroscopic data they wanted from the instrumentation, though it will take a while to process.

And commenter Pissy Mcslogbot posted this image of the impact:

melies.gif

Via National Geographic

 

Comments (5) RSS

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pissy mcslogbot 1
kinda low-res for NASA but:
http://www.orbit.zkm.de/files/melies.gif
Posted by pissy mcslogbot on October 9, 2009 at 1:40 PM
2
ha HA!!!

JOKE'S ON YOU! All faked. Just like the moon landing!
Posted by Ackham on October 9, 2009 at 1:51 PM
3
The plume was pretty much invisible, even through observatory telescopes (haven't seen the Hubble observation yet) but NASA thinks they got the spectroscopic data they wanted from the instrumentation, though it will take a while to process.
Posted by Peter F on October 9, 2009 at 1:52 PM
Indy 4
"dry hole" ?
Let the santorum jokes begin ...
Posted by Indy on October 9, 2009 at 1:58 PM
Will in Seattle 5
Be nice to see some vids with Muse or U.S.E. as background music ...
Posted by Will in Seattle http://www.facebook.com/WillSeattle on October 9, 2009 at 2:15 PM

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