NASA Takes Aim at Moon with Double Sledgehammer

[austin552]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080227/sc_space/nasatakesaimatmoonwithdoublesledgehammer

Jeremy Hsu
Staff Writer
SPACE.com
Wed Feb 27, 7:02 AM ET



Scientists are priming two spacecraft to slam into the moon's South Pole to see if the lunar double whammy reveals hidden water ice.

The Earth-on-moon violence may raise eyebrows, but NASA's history shows that such missions can yield extremely useful scientific observations.


"I think that people are apprehensive about it because it seems violent or crude, but it's very economical," said Tony Colaprete, the principal investigator for the mission at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.


NASA's previous Lunar Prospector mission detected large amounts of hydrogen at the moon's poles before crashing itself into a crater at the lunar South Pole. Now the much larger Lunar Crater and Observation Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission, set for a February 2009 moon crash, will take aim and discover whether some of that hydrogen is locked away in the form of frozen water.


LCROSS will piggyback on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission for an Oct. 28 launch atop an Atlas 5 rocket equipped with a Centaur upper stage. While the launch will ferry LRO to the moon in about four days, LCROSS is in for a three-month journey to reach its proper moon smashing position. Once within range, the Centaur upper stage doubles as the main 4,400 pound (2,000 kg) impactor spacecraft for LCROSS.


The smaller Shepherding Spacecraft will guide Centaur towards its target crater, before dropping back to watch - and later fly through - the plume of moon dust and debris kicked up by Centaur's impact. The shepherding vehicle is packed with a light photometer, a visible light camera and four infrared cameras to study the Centaur's lunar plume before it turns itself into a second impactor and strikes a different crater about four minutes later.


"This payload delivery represents a new way of doing business for the center and the agency in general," said Daniel Andrews, LCROSS project manager at Ames, in a statement. "LCROSS primarily is using commercial-off-the-shelf instruments on this mission to meet the mission's accelerated development schedule and cost restraints."


Figuring out the final destinations for the $79 million LCROSS mission is "like trying to drive to San Francisco and not knowing where it is on the map," Colaprete said. He and other mission scientists hope to use observations from LRO and the Japanese Kaguya (Selene) lunar orbiter to map crater locations before LCROSS dives in.


"Nobody has ever been to the poles of the moon, and there are very unique craters - similar to Mercury - where sunlight doesn't reach the bottom," Colaprete said. Earth-based radar has also helped illuminate some permanently shadowed craters. By the time LCROSS arrives, it can zero in on its 19 mile (30 km) wide targets within 328 feet (100 meters).


Scientists want the impactor spacecraft to hit smooth, flat areas away from large rocks, which would ideally allow the impact plume to rise up out of the crater shadows into sunlight. That in turn lets LRO and Earth-based telescopes see the results.


"By understanding what's in these craters, we're examining a fossil record of the early solar system and would occurred at Earth 3 billion years ago," Colaprete said. LCROSS is currently aiming at target craters Faustini and Shoemaker, which Colaprete likened to "fantastic time capsules" at 3 billion and 3.5 billion years old.


LCROSS researchers anticipate a more than a 90 percent chance that the impactors will find some form of hydrogen at the poles. The off-chance exists that the impactors will hit a newer crater that lacks water - yet scientists can learn about the distribution of hydrogen either way.


"We take [what we learn] to the next step, whether it's rovers or more impactors," Colaprete said.


This comes as the latest mission to apply brute force to science.


The Deep Impact mission made history in 2005 by sending a probe crashing into comet Tempel 1. Besides Lunar Prospector's grazing strike on the moon in 1999, the European Space Agency's Smart-1 satellite dove more recently into the lunar surface in 2006.


LCROSS will take a much more head-on approach than either Lunar Prospector or Smart-1, slamming into the moon's craters at a steep angle while traveling with greater mass at 1.6 miles per second (2.5 km/s). The overall energy of the impact will equal 100 times that of Lunar Prospector and kick up 1,102 tons of debris and dust.


"It's a cost-effective, relatively low-risk way of doing initial exploration," Colaprete said, comparing the mission's approach to mountain prospectors who used crude sticks of dynamite to blow up gully walls and sift for gold. Scientists are discussing similar missions for exploring asteroids and planets such as Mars.


Nevertheless, Colaprete said they "may want to touch the moon a bit more softly" after LCROSS has its day.

[kach22i]

They have done similar things to asteroids and to Mars.

[flashgordon13]

NASA has had plenty of practice crashing probes into mars(oops, they didn't mean to). Crashing into the moon should be easy.

[JavaBrewer]

This Friday is the big day.

[motion]

Live video should be very interesting. I hope they capture it with the Mauna Kea telescope (keck?) as well.

[Gogar]

And the impact created a nearly imperceptable wobble in the rotation of the moon, altering its orbit, which eventually led to the moon entering the earth's atmosphere on December 21, 2012.

[bell]

Originally Posted by Gogar

And the impact created a nearly imperceptable wobble in the rotation of the moon, altering its orbit, which eventually led to the moon entering the earth's atmosphere on December 21, 2012.

yep.....we should leave the moon be......without it we are dust......

[sammyg2]

$79 million in taxpayer funds to find crash a coulpe of space ships into the moon to prove out something we already know, that there is no useable water on the moon. what a deal.

I can't understand why anyone would want to cut NASA's $19 billion or so annual budget.

[Tobra]

I don't think they will hit it hard enough jack it up too much. I hope they don't anyway.

How would water exist there other than inside the rocks in small amounts, maybe ice in the shade, would it sublime, solid to gas directly?

I am dubious about the cost benefit ratio for this endeavor

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

to prove out something we already know, that there is no useable water on the moon.

Um...that is the exact opposite of what they are trying to prove. There should be HUGE amounts of usable water up there.

Originally Posted by Tobra

How would water exist there other than inside the rocks in small amounts, maybe ice in the shade, would it sublime, solid to gas directly?

There are craters on the poles of the Moon where sunlight has not been seen for billions of years. Water that comes to the Moon via asteroid/meteorite strikes would sublimate immediately. The water vapor molecules would them start a random jump where they slowly bounce along the surface, cling to a rock, then are knocked off that rock by a cosmic ray from the Sun. Over thousands or millions of years, that water molecule would eventually end up in one of these craters, where it would stop moving and join the giant frozen oceans that exist there. This frozen water can be a source of water, oxygen and hydrogen for a potential Moon base, and as fuel for ships that would use it as a harbor on their way to more distant planets.

Also, based on what we're learning about Mars now (giant sheets of ice under the soil), it's possible that the Moon has similar amounts of water trapped just under the surface.

[dd74]

Shouldn't we have long since had people on the moon who have already dug into the surface for water? At least since around 1969?

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by dd74

Shouldn't we have long since had people on the moon who have already dug into the surface for water? At least since around 1969?

They did very little excavating on their 6 trips up there (in fact, I don't know that they actually dug at all...). It's taken numerous vehicles, including one who's sole job was to dig and look for traces of ice to find it on Mars. We know more about the Martian landscape now that we do the lunar landscape, which is a bit strange...

[BRPORSCHE]

Apollo 17 was the only mission that they brought a geologist to the moon.

[dd74]

What I meant is a base, a colony -- of people -- living on the moon. 40 yrs. later after Armstrong, and we're blasting probes into the surface? Interesting, but a bit disappointing at the same time.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

Um...that is the exact opposite of what they are trying to prove. There should be HUGE amounts of usable water up there.

LOL, OK, define "useable".
This should be interesting.

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by dd74

but a bit disappointing at the same time.

No disagreement there. I don't pretend to know why no human has stepped foot on the Moon since before I was born, but i know that in hindsight, it could not have been a good decision. We should have at the LEAST had unmanned equipment up there...a radio telescope on the far side, high resolution cameras scouring the surface in 3D and multiple wavelengths, mining equipment, all sorts of stuff. Yes, human habitation would be great too, but even having some mechanical stuff actually contributing data on a continuous basis should be a minimum. Like I said, we know more about Mars that the Moon now.

Originally Posted by sammyg2

LOL, OK, define "useable".
This should be interesting.

You need me to define "useable"?

[trekkor]

It would much easier to just load the cash onto a pallet and burn it.

Very quick, not much planning involved, with the same outcome...


KT

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by dd74

What I meant is a base, a colony -- of people -- living on the moon. 40 yrs. later after Armstrong, and we're blasting probes into the surface? Interesting, but a bit disappointing at the same time.

The only thing a moon base would be good for is to suck up and incredible amount of tax money. I see no benefit whatsoever that could even come close to justifying the incredible cost.
None. Zip, Nada. same goes for the space station.
can anyone name a single benefit that has come directly from the international space station that is currently costing us $ billions?

NASA has become and giant industrial welfare project. A way of creating and perpetuating incredibly expensive hi-tech jobs. Doing unneccessary work on unnecessary projects. If you piled up all the dollars we've spent on NASA over the years you could darn near walk to the moon on it.
OK, that's an exaggeration but if you took all the dollars that have been spend on NASA and US space exploration since 1958 it would be a pile of dollar bills almost 28,000 miles high.
when measured in real terms (Meaning: if the value of $1.00 at today's rate equaled the value of $1.00 in 1958) it would be a pile of dollar bills nearly 51,000 miles high. that's a big ole pile o'money. Money that was taken out of the paychecks of workers and given to spend by NASA on whatever they dream up without any questions of payback or return on investment.

NASA had a real purpose at one time, and that was to out-spend the USSR in an attempt to bankrupt them. That worked but what is the need nor NASA now?
What do we get back for our money?

NASA should be run as a business, not a charity.
They should be provided taxpayer money for all projects that return a profit on the investment and not a penny more.

[Pazuzu]

Why stop at NASA? you are aware that lots of other people are stealing your money via taxes, right? Why not get rid of all of them? Wipe the whole slate clean!! Oh...until you learn about all of the federally funded science that actually helps you daily, possibly saves the life of you or someone you know, we should decide to keep THOSE funds, right?

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

You need me to define "useable"?

Yes. Abolutely. I want to know what YOUR definition of useable is in this context.

I want to understand how you could possibly think that some traces of ice crystals that would cost us a minimum of $1 million per gallon to turn into clean water (my guestimate, could cost much more than that) could possibly be considered useable.
I want to know how you can rationalize that.

Oh, I think I get it. You're talking about OPM, OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY!
I see how it is. Apparently other peoples money has no value to you whatsoever.