The Biggest Bang that Noone ever heard (mirror)

Thunderf00t's video:

LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) is about to hit the moon. The exact time of the impact (give or take a few seconds) is Friday 9th Oct 2009 11:31:30 UTC (about 7.30 EDT).

Its going to hit at about 9000km/hr (~2.5km/s), and with a mass of about 2 tons that will give it about the same energy as a ton of TNT. Its not quite the biggest extra-terrestrial manmade silent bangs ever. Deep Impact which hit comet Temple had a considerably smaller impactor (~400kg) but went MUCH faster (MV^2 counts!). Deep Impact hit the comet at about 10 km/s and had the same energy as about 5 tons of TNT.

The weather of late has been lousy in upstate NY, but if its clear, I will try to record the impact.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/09/14/lcross-impact-site-...

This latter site is *GREAT*
http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/observation/amateur.htm

All the sky animations were done with Celestia. Its free, and fantastic!
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• LCROSS
• Moon
• Impact
• Lunar
• crater
• water
• crash
• Nasa
• visible
• from
• earth
• Biggest
• silent
• bang
• ever
• explosion

[Nerdskog]

exciting!