You may have heard the slightly hysterical reports about NASA planning to "bomb" the moon tomorrow. The tin-foil hat brigade is out in full force over it. (Really!)
Of course, there's no "bomb." A lunar reconnaissance satellite (the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite--- LCROSS) still is attached to the now-useless rocket motor that brought it to the moon. NASA is going to de-orbit the spent rocket it in a controlled way so that its demise can yield a set of unique measurements: The impact will throw up a large cloud of whatever it is that makes up the floor of the crater.
NASA has chosen a deeply-shadowed crater near the moon's south pole as the target, and will try to steer the rocket there. The sun never, ever shines there; it's among the coldest places in the solar system. The thought is that there may be ancient water ice preserved under the dust. If so, ice particles or water vapor tossed up in the dust cloud should be visible and measurable from earth.
Finding a ready source of water would hugely simplify future plans for going to the moon: Water ice can be used for drinking water, or split into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for fuel. Being able to replenish supplies from local materials instead of having to haul everything up from the Earth makes future exploration much easier to plan and fund.
Also, finding abundant water there, just as it's also been found on Mars, will increase our knowledge of how the solar system--- and we --- came to be. Just a few years ago, Earth was seen as a watery oasis in an arid universe. Now, it's starting to look like water's everywhere!
The satellite impact will be at about 7:30AM EDT tomorrow (Friday, Oct 9, 2009), and it'll be televised.
I, for one, will be watching!
LCROSS FAQ:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/FAQs/index.html
Live feeds:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33196816/ns/technology_and_science-space
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/10/06/astronomy-service-slooh-will-let-you-watch-the-lcross-impact-live-on-october-9/
Bomb the moon wackos:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2009/10/07/moos.bomb.moon.follies.cnn
I saw the headline and said whhhattt?? then I saw the story and said oh....more money waisted...damn
ReplyDeleteI give up. I thought it might be fun to see what the wackos were saying/doing (tin-foil hat brigade and all that,) but clicking on the link got me nothing even though I did end up at the CNN video page - the part of the page that wasn't black just said "Loading..." but never did. When I tried it in other ways I got "General Error", "[an error occurred while processing this directive]", or "Site blocked. myprops.org is not allowed on this network." Hm. Must be sinister.
ReplyDeleteI must say, though, that I don't agree with Letterman's (yes, the now infamous David) illustration: I think he had it backwards when he showed earth being annihilated by a 'ricochet' laser. I expect to see little pieces of moon on my front porch when I wake up.
I think the bombing is insane!!!
ReplyDelete