NASA to bomb the moon on friday..!

[robby3333]

For a second time nasa is attacking the moon.... what will they think of next?


NASA has chosen the final destination for the LCROSS lunar impacting probe: the crater Cabeus A, near the Moon’s south pole.

So why is NASA smacking a probe into the Moon at high speed, and why there?

The idea is that over millions and billions of years, a lot of comets have hit the Moon. The water from these comets hits the surface and sublimates away… but if any settles at the bottoms of deep craters near the Moon’s poles, these permanently shadowed regions can act as a refrigerator, keeping the water from disappearing. It can stay there, locked up as ice, for a long, long time. Some estimates indicate there could be billions of tons of ice near the Moon’s south pole.

Detecting that water is tough. Radar results have been inconclusive, with some people saying there’s lots of water, and others saying there’s none at all. By impacting a probe there, any ice located at the impact site will be shot up above the lunar surface, where sunlight will break it up into O+ and OH- molecules, which can be detected. Thus, LCROSS. I have a more detailed description of all this in an earlier blog post about LCROSS.

The choice of Cabeus A for the impact site is a good one. It’s near the south pole, it’s a likely spot for there to be ice under the surface, it’s on the near side of the Moon, so people back here on Earth can observe it, but close enough to the limb that any ejected water can be seen. Here’s a map of the area:





LCROSS is planned to impact the crater at 11:30 GMT on October 9, which is early morning for the U.S. (in fact, there will be two impacts; one from the spacecraft and another by the Centaur booster) The plume from the impact should stretch up many kilometers. It will almost certainly be too thin to be seen by amateur instruments, but the impact itself should make a bright enough flash to be seen if you have a telescope. The crater itself will be in shadow, making the light flash easier to spot. It’ll only last a second or two, so if you want to observe it, be prepared! NASA has a nice webpage with all the info you need to watch this historic event for yourself. I hope everyone gets a chance to see this!

LCROSS lunar impact site..



The impact site is the crater Cabeus-A, the largish crater to the left of center. The resolution of the image is about 50 meters/pixel, and the field of view is about 50 km (30 miles) across. The crater is near the Moon’s south pole, and the bottom is permanently in shadow. See the shadow across the crater? As the Moon spins and orbits the Earth, that shadow never lifts, but instead moves around the crater floor like the hand of a celestial clock.

We know there is water all over the Moon in small quantities, but is there a lake of frozen water under the crater’s dusty floor? When LCROSS impacts, we may find out.

This image was taken by SMART-1, an ambitious ESA spacecraft that orbited the Moon for nearly two years. Its ultimate fate? It too impacted the lunar surface in September 2006. While that impact wasn’t meant to hunt for water, it did kick up some dust, and made a flash bright enough to be detected from Earth. Its mission was a big success, and its demise was a harbinger for things to come on October 9.

[robby3333]

Updated....

NASA will Smash a Satellite+2.2-ton rocket Into the Moon Friday.

3:14 P.M. — NASA will throw a one-two punch at the big old moon Friday and the whole world will have ringside seats for the lunar dust-up.
NASA will send a used-up spacecraft slamming into the moon's south pole to kick up a massive plume of lunar dirt and then scour it to see if there's any water or ice spraying up. The idea is to confirm the theory that water—a key resource if people are going to go back to the moon—is hidden below the barren moonscape.
The crashing spaceship was launched in June along with an orbiter that's now mapping the lunar surface. LCROSS—short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and pronounced L-Cross—is on a collision course with the moon, attached to an empty 2.2-ton rocket that helped get the probe off the ground.
Thursday evening, about 10 hours before smashing into the moon, LCROSS and its empty rocket will separate.
Then comes the first part of the lunar assault.Friday At 7:31 a.m. EDT, the larger empty rocket will crash into a permanently dark crater and kick up a 6.2 mile high spray of debris.
The two ships will smash into the moon at 5,600 mph, more than seven times the speed of sound. The explosion will have the force of 1.5 tons of TNT and throw 772,000 pounds of lunar dirt out of the crater. It will create a new crater — inside an old one — about half the size of an Olympic swimming pool,

Turn on NASA TV. The space agency will broadcast the action live from the Moon, with coverage beginning Friday morning at 3:15 am PDT (10:15 UT).

[robby3333]

Nasa Channel # 213 ....7:31 am EDT

Then comes the first part of the lunar assault.Friday At 7:31 a.m. EDT, the larger empty rocket will crash into a permanently dark crater and kick up a 6.2 mile high spray of debris.

[TD52]

sort of stupid I would say .... they said there is waste on the moon and they want to prove it and they are crashing 2 expensive rockets into the moon to prove it .... it has been proved that the moon came from the earth .... so logic will tell you it had water on it so what is it going to do for us ... just a waste of money unless they are going to make it a place for ppl to live ....and it is just going to piss off the moon ppl and they may get mad at us... lol

[robby3333]

I missed it slept in..Woud really like to see the video of it...


NASA probes give moon a double smack


NASA smacked two spacecraft into the lunar south pole Friday morning in a search for hidden ice. Instruments confirm that a large empty rocket hull barreled into the moon at 7:31 a.m., followed four minutes later by a probe with cameras taking pictures of the first crash.

But the big live public splash people anticipated didn't quite happen. Screens got fuzz and no immediate pictures of the crash or the six-mile plume of lunar dust that the mission was all about. The public, which followed the crashes on the Internet and at observatories, seemed puzzled.

NASA officials said their instruments were working, but live photos of the actual crash were missing. Some select photos should be ready by a 10 a.m. press conference, they said.

But so far all NASA had was "images on the way in," said NASA spokesman Grey Hautaluoma.

Expectations by the public for live plume video were probably too high and based on pre-crash animations, some of which were not by NASA, project manager Dan Andrews told The Associated Press Friday morning 80 minutes after impact.

Another issue, one NASA thought was a good possibility going into Friday, was that the lighting was bad and work needs to be done on images to make them easier to see, Andrews said. Experts said the images could be essentially "gray against black," he said.

"What matters for us is: What is the nature of the stuff that was kicked up going in?" Andrews said. "All nine instruments were working fine and we received good data."

Andrews said the science team is pouring through the information — including what are supposed to be good images from ground-based telescopes on Earth — to answer the big question: Is there some form of water under the moon's surface that was dislodged? It will probably be two weeks before scientists will be certain about the answer, he said.

Before the crash, mission scientists said there was a chance that if it was really moist under the crater, they'd know about water within an hour. That's not the case now, Andrews said.

People who got up before dawn to look for the crash at Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory threw confused looks at each other instead.

Telescope demonstrator Jim Mahon called the celestial show "anticlimactic."

"I was hoping we'd see a flash or a flare," Mahon said.

About 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles, 70 elementary school students at the Lewis Center for Educational Research charter school in Apple Valley capped off their weeklong "moon camp" experience by rising early to watch NASA television along with 300 members of the public.

"It was cool seeing actual pictures of the moon live," said 10-year-old Jackson Bridges, but he added: "I wanted to see the debris flying out. It was still interesting to watch, but it was less interesting without the flying debris."

The first and much bigger crash was supposed to hit with the force of 1.5 tons of TNT into crater Cabeus and create a mini-crater about half the size of an Olympic pool. The second crash was to be about one-third as strong.

The idea is to confirm the theory that water — a key resource if people are going to go back to the moon — is hidden below the barren moonscape.

The images were to come from the probe itself. The probe is LCROSS, short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and pronounced L-Cross. It had five cameras and four other pieces of equipment to look for ice or any form of water as it dove through the dust storm created by the empty hull.

Minutes before the first crash, NASA was riding high, reporting no trouble at the Ames Research Center in California, where the mission was being controlled.

"Everything is working so very well," NASA's Victoria Friedensen, a manager in NASA's exploration office, said minutes before the one-two smack.

[samson]

Why not start blowing up the moon ?????------------they`ve blown up or messed up everything here on Earth so why not start diversifying ?? More idiots !!

If they want to probe something so bad----I`ve got a few suggestions.