Lunar Impact (frames, 558px) These false-color frames extracted from the original black and white video show the explosion in progress. At its peak, the flash was as bright as a 4th magnitude star.
Posted on 05/17/2013 12:05:52 PM PDT by LibWhacker
May 17, 2013: For the past 8 years, NASA astronomers have been monitoring the Moon for signs of explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the lunar surface. "Lunar meteor showers" have turned out to be more common than anyone expected, with hundreds of detectable impacts occurring every year.
They've just seen the biggest explosion in the history of the program.
"On March 17, 2013, an object about the size of a small boulder hit the lunar surface in Mare Imbrium," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we've ever seen before."
A new ScienceCast video describes the bright lunar explosion of March 17, 2013.
Anyone looking at the Moon at the moment of impact could have seen the explosion--no telescope required. For about one second, the impact site was glowing like a 4th magnitude star.
Ron Suggs, an analyst at the Marshall Space Flight Center, was the first to notice the impact in a digital video recorded by one of the monitoring program's 14-inch telescopes. "It jumped right out at me, it was so bright," he recalls.
The 40 kg meteoroid measuring 0.3 to 0.4 meters wide hit the Moon traveling 56,000 mph. The resulting explosion1 packed as much punch as 5 tons of TNT.
Lunar Impact (frames, 558px) These false-color frames extracted from the original black and white video show the explosion in progress. At its peak, the flash was as bright as a 4th magnitude star.
Cooke believes the lunar impact might have been part of a much larger event.
"On the night of March 17, NASA and University of Western Ontario all-sky cameras picked up an unusual number of deep-penetrating meteors right here on Earth," he says. "These fireballs were traveling along nearly identical orbits between Earth and the asteroid belt."
This means Earth and the Moon were pelted by meteoroids at about the same time.
“My working hypothesis is that the two events are related, and that this constitutes a short duration cluster of material encountered by the Earth-Moon system," says Cooke.
One of the goals of the lunar monitoring program is to identify new streams of space debris that pose a potential threat to the Earth-Moon system. The March 17th event seems to be a good candidate.
Controllers of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have been notified of the strike. The crater could be as wide as 20 meters, which would make it an easy target for LRO the next time the spacecraft passes over the impact site. Comparing the size of the crater to the brightness of the flash would give researchers a valuable "ground truth" measurement to validate lunar impact models.
NASA's lunar monitoring program has detected hundreds of meteoroid impacts. The brightest, detected on March 17, 2013, in Mare Imbrium, is marked by the red square.
Unlike Earth, which has an atmosphere to protect it, the Moon is airless and exposed. "Lunar meteors" crash into the ground with fair frequency. Since the monitoring program began in 2005, NASA’s lunar impact team has detected more than 300 strikes, most orders of magnitude fainter than the March 17th event. Statistically speaking, more than half of all lunar meteors come from known meteoroid streams such as the Perseids and Leonids. The rest are sporadic meteors--random bits of comet and asteroid debris of unknown parentage.
U.S. Space Exploration Policy eventually calls for extended astronaut stays on the lunar surface. Identifying the sources of lunar meteors and measuring their impact rates gives future lunar explorers an idea of what to expect. Is it safe to go on a moonwalk, or not? The middle of March might be a good time to stay inside.
"We'll be keeping an eye out for signs of a repeat performance next year when the Earth-Moon system passes through the same region of space," says Cooke. “Meanwhile, our analysis of the March 17th event continues.”
For updates stay tuned to science.nasa.gov.
Footnote: (1) The Moon has no oxygen atmosphere, so how can something explode? Lunar meteors don't require oxygen or combustion to make themselves visible. They hit the ground with so much kinetic energy that even a pebble can make a crater several feet wide. The flash of light comes not from combustion but rather from the thermal glow of molten rock and hot vapors at the impact site.
Bush's Fault
Bush’s fault.
Great minds think alike! LOL
Aliens trying to blow up the moon;
Sparkley Moon, sounds like a new drink.
Impossible, the moon is made out of cheese.
Meteor swarm ping....
That’s what the outer gas giants and the moon are there for - to keep us safe.
Would you be so kind as to spot on a Moon map the site of the basalt flow that Catholic Monks in Italy witnessed in the 1600’s? They saw the red glow for a couple of days. I do not know if it too was due to an impact, or just normal flow of focused heat energy (ie, a volcano).
I wonder why impacts in the central region are essetially nonexistent.
Bush’s Fault
~~~~~~~~~~
Bush’s Fault Bush’s Fault
Consider what the impact map would look like if the moons surface was rolled out flat. The distribution would look far more uniform. Although I agree the center band does look a bit sparse even considering the above.
Could the geosynchonous incidence of Moon toward Earth be a factor?
But that’s a satellite or telescopic photo, no?
“Impossible, the moon is made out of cheese.”
Perhaps kamikaze space rats so hungry they crash headlong into the moon desperate for food because they’re agonizingly hungry?
Also, measurable impacts at both polar limbs are nonexistent.
The Mayans knew.
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