NASA in search of water on the moon

In the pre-dawn hours Friday, a spacecraft is scheduled to punch a 13-foot-deep hole in the moon's south pole to find out whether ice is hidden in a crater that hasn't seen sunlight in billions of ... In the pre-dawn hours Friday, a spacecraft is scheduled to punch a 13-foot-deep hole in the moon's south pole to find out whether ice is hidden in a crater that hasn't seen sunlight in billions of years. NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, which set out for the moon in June, was on course Tuesday to position itself to steer a rocket into the 2-mile-deep crater Cabeus at 6:30 a.m. CDT Friday morning. Four minutes later, if all goes as planned, the spacecraft will fly through the cloud of debris that will rise above the lunar surface. Before crashing itself less than a minute later, the satellite's nine instruments will analyze the dust and debris for evidence of water. Scientists preparing for the impact could hardly contain their excitement over what might turn up. The spacecraft is looking great. I don't think we could miss the moon now if we tried, said Steve Hixson, vice president of Advanced Concepts at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, Calif., which built the craft. It's our job to confirm there is water there, said Dan Andrews, the project manager at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., which designed the spacecraft's instruments. But even if it's very dry, that's a good answer to have. Live video of impact The LCROSS satellite was originally a $79 million add-on to the larger, $500 million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, whose mission is to map the moon. But the theatrical nature of the impact event has caught the attention of the public. Thousands of people are expected to show up tonight at the Ames complex south of San Francisco for an evening of music and movies that will culminate with a live video feed of the impact. It's kind of hard to keep on top of how much interest there is out there, Andrews said. I've heard 10,000 are coming. For decades after the Apollo missions of the late 1960s and early '70s, scientists considered the moon little more than a dry wasteland. But in 1999, NASA's Lunar Prospector mission found evidence of hydrogen, a possible indicator of water, in permanently shadowed craters at both poles. Impact at 5,600 mph Since then, several other spacecraft have detected the same, leading scientists to wonder if there could be large stores of ice in craters. The crater-observing satellite launched June 18 attached to a second spacecraft, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Shortly after launch, the two spacecraft separated. The orbiter continued a year-long mission to map the moon in search of landing sites for future lunar colonists. The sensing satellite went into a long, looping orbit around the Earth to line itself up for Friday's impact. Visible with telescope Andrews said satellite controllers are aiming for a spot in the northwest region of the crater, where temperatures of minus-397 degrees Fahrenheit would ensure that any water would be frozen as hard as rock. According to NASA, the rocket will be traveling at 5,600 mph when it plunges into Cabeus. That will create a dust cloud rising as much as six miles above the lunar surface, providing a rare show for amateur astronomers. Theoretically, evidence of the impact will be visible throughout the southwest and as far away as Hawaii — if the observer has a large enough telescope at hand and good viewing conditions. Because the debris cloud from the impact is expected to last less than a minute before settling back down on the lunar surface, viewers need to be punctual and have sharp eyes.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• nasa
• moon
• bomb
• lcross
• missile
• rocket
• water
• space

[kane123369]

niggas....

[D33p100]

@valiusssss thats gonna hurt wen he shits

[BedStuyBro]

I just pissed in a cup. Tons of water there. I just saved NASA a fuckin trip.

And to u dumb mutha fuckas that's trying to sound intelligent and calling mawfuckas retarded, check yourself. Check your fucking self. You have no clue, no knowledge, no facts. Wisdom is the act of taking facts or what may appear to be facts and drawing solid conclusions based on experience. If u watched a couple of stupid TV shows (We call that device the idiot box, btw) and think u have learned something, u didn't!

[valiusssss]

i'm launchin a rocket up your ass

[Leadman1989]

let you know how i feel about this video (my pleasure)

- rate thumbs down WAY down

- comment i guess this would be it

- subscribe No thank you you're retarded

the point of launching the rocket into the moon is to send up a cloud of moon dust so they can do something called a spectral analysis and determine if it contains h2o

stop making videos you're making us look bad

[ZeroToleranceLT]

You dont know what your talking about , and you sound retarded.

[NarutozShuriken]

@beefygreenapples

If there is water on moon , then is LIFE on moon.... Silly

[beefygreenapples]

who gives a fuck if there's water on the moon? or what the hell the temperature of mars is? billions of dollars down the drain when there is people here that are going through hard times and need some help.

[daveusaz1218]

Their heads, Oops, sorry

[daveusaz1218]

OH yeah, off with there heads