BOMBS AWAY: An artist's conception of the LCROSS spacecraft and the Centaur rocket stage en route to the violent end of their mission.
Image: NASA
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The astronomy community, amateurs and professionals alike, will turn its attention to the moon early tomorrow morning in the hopes of confirming the long-suspected presence of water ice trapped in permanently shadowed areas near the lunar poles (not to mention the drama of seeing two man-made objects crash into the moon). A research collaboration showed last month that water exists at very low levels across the lunar surface, but concentrated ice deposits would likely be a more accessible and abundant resource.
At 7:31 A.M. (Eastern Daylight Time), if all goes according to plan, a spent Centaur rocket stage will separate from NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) and strike Cabeus, a crater near the moon's south pole. The LCROSS spacecraft itself will follow closely, flying through the Centaur's debris plume for an up-close analysis before impacting into Cabeus itself at 7:35.
But the LCROSS probe won't be the only observer tracking the impacts to see what they kick up. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), launched in June along with LCROSS, will pass overhead and take measurements of the debris plume, and the Hubble Space Telescope will be trained on the targeted region, as well. According to NASA, the larger initial plume should peak in brightness 30 to 100 seconds after the rocket stage's impact.
And across the country, numerous observatories will open their doors to allow the public access to high-power telescopes for viewing the event. The impact plumes may even be visible through amateur telescopes with apertures of around 10 inches or more, according to NASA.
Live feeds from two amateur-size scopes will be streamed over the Internet by SLOOH, a company that sells virtual access to a suite of high-powered telescopes at different sites around the globe. (For this event, the company will offer free access to two smaller telescopes in the U.S.) The larger of the two SLOOH instruments, according to a public relations representative for the company, is an 11-inch model in Arizona. That telescope will likely have a better chance to capture the plumes rising from the moon than the company's other outpost in New Hampshire, as the sun will have risen on the east coast by the time of the event.
NASA, for its part, will feature coverage of the impacts on NASA TV, including live footage obtained by the LCROSS probe before its planned demise. The space agency may also have access to views obtained by the University of Hawaii's 88-inch telescope, which is perched atop Mauna Kea, one of the best astronomical viewing locations in the world.
If the LCROSS mission indeed excavates water ice from Cabeus, it would confirm a number of indirect detections, such as that obtained by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The LRO, like its predecessor, the Lunar Prospector, has seen abundances of hydrogen on the moon that may be indicative of vast stores of water. But Lunar Prospector, in its own well-observed 1999 impact into a shadowy south polar crater, did not turn up signs of water ice.
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8 Comments
Add CommentYA, lets let the ametures watch us blow up another planet ..... well done ya knobs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is truly F***** Up!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI mean really.... come on...
do scientists truly have larger brains than the rest of us peons
who do not exert control over these decisions...
so to be a NASA scientists means you jeopordize the entire
balance of the planet in an insane game
of bumper car rockets
This is truly F***** up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNASA ..... does it really require massive amounts of brain power to figure out that playing bumper car rockets in space could completely upset the balance of the universe....
Beware of your power....hans solo... it could have devastating
effects
who gave them the right to bomb the moon,words can not say how i feel about this. it is so wrong in many ways.but firstly she is not ours to bomb. if nasa feel it is ok to bomb the moon then they must think that it is ok for iraq to bomb america to me its the same damn thing. you disgust me!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs there an echo in here?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs there an echo in here?
Do you really draw a moral equivelance between bombing people and an experiment on a lifeless moon???
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr, are you just trying to get someone to react?
So your comments are either not well thought out or you are intentionally provoking readers to react. I can't decide which.
it is amazing how some folks don't understand the scientific gain from this experiment. Numerous meteors bombard the moon every day. One single control collision from which we can learn a lot is not a matter of concern. What the preceeding comments demostrate is the failure of our schools to educate our children in math and science. If our schools would have done their job we would get questions about the nature of the experiment and what we can learn from it. Instead we got stupid comments from the unlearned!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe moon it hit with astroyed over twice the size of the bomb that we used on that day.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this