Posted on 06/16/2009 1:39:29 PM PDT by decimon
In an unprecedented scientific endeavor — and what may be one of the coolest space missions ever — NASA is preparing to fly a rocket booster into the moon, triggering a six-mile-high explosion that scientists hope will confirm the presence of water.
The four-month mission of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which will be directed from NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, is to discover whether water is frozen in the perpetual darkness of craters near the moon's south pole. As a potential source of oxygen for life support and hydrogen for rocket fuel, that water would be a tremendous boost to NASA's plans to restart human exploration of the moon.
But the launch is scheduled for Thursday at Cape Canaveral, Fla. It was delayed a day to allow repairs to the space shuttle.
Shuttle Endeavour must fly by this weekend. Otherwise the mission to deliver the final piece of the Japanese space station lab must wait until mid-July because of unfavorable sun angles that would heat up the shuttle. The moon mission — NASA's first in a decade — must be launched by Saturday as well. Otherwise it will have to wait until the end of the month for another shot.
(Excerpt) Read more at siliconvalley.com ...
I’m thinking of the more intentional test to see if the crash would kick up water crystals.
The Ranger 7 crash was unavoidable, considering the pictures they wanted.
He’s thinking of “Space: 1999”, where the nuclear waste storage fields on the moon blow up, hurling the moon out of the solar system.
More to the point IIRC, we hadn't yet developed the means for a soft landing. Also, we weren't really sure what the moon's surface consisted of.
Hadn't the Russians claimed to have already impacted the moon with no proof and the pictures taken by Ranger 7 were to prove that we actually had accomplished it?
I must have missed that one!
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