Millions Watch Internet of NASA "Bombing" Moon

$US79 Million Science Experiment Hopes to Find Water

Oct 11, 2009

On October 9, 2009, people watched live on the internet as the LCROSS and its two-tonne Centaur rocket crashed on the lunar crater, expecting an impressive explosion.

An expected six-mile high cloud of debris created by spacecrafts crashing into the Moon's south pole in a search for water was hardly noticeable, almost a tiny dot, but Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellites’ (LCROSS) infra-red camera did pick up heat signature from impact.

NASA Says LCROSS Impacts “Successful”

The LCROSS rocket was first to crash into the moon’s Cabeus crater blasting up 350 tonnes of rock and dust. Travelling faster than a bullet, it was supposed to hit and create a mini-crater about half the size of an Olympic pool. The second crash by the smaller LCROSS probe was to be about one-third as strong.

The space agency said the blasts successfully threw up lunar dirt that was captured by sensitive devices on board the trailing LCROSS craft and will start sifting and analyzing the 350 tonnes of dirt from the impact. Scientists hoped to find evidence of ice at the bottom of dark craters at the Moon's poles, where temperatures are lower than minus 170C.

Finding water, which could be used for drinking, making fuel and providing oxygen, would have major implications for the future of moon exploration. A ready supply of water would make it far more practicable to build lunar bases or launch missions to Mars from the Moon. If hydrogen is present as water ice, then the data would imply the top meter of the surface in these craters holds about 200,000 million liters of water in total.

It will take several days for analysts to evaluate the data and several weeks to determine whether and how much hydrogen-bearing compounds were found, according to The Sydney Morning Herald, October 10, 2009. The LCROSS mission is also a preparatory mission for the Constellation program which aims to send Americans back to the moon by 2020.

Last month new findings from three spacecraft, including India's Chandrayaan-1 probe, showed that small amounts of water might be chemically bound up with the moon's soil.

Spacecraft Blasts on Moon Smaller than Expected

Millions of people watching the crash live on the Internet were disappointed. The cameras mounted on the 891kg spacecraft failed to beam live footage of the initial impact as the craft flew through the debris, but NASA said the experiment went well. The first crash was filmed by the LCROSS probe, which had detached from the rocket the night before.

It beamed live information to Earth from its five cameras and four scientific instruments as it flew above the impact zone before it too smashed into the surface four minutes later.

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