by Richard A. Kerr
Image of the LCROSS target crater before impact (top), and the last visible-light photo from the spacecraft (bottom). Although intended to produce a visible plume of ejecta, the impact has so far not yielded anything quite so spectacular. (Photos: NASA)
I didn't see anything. Did you? After the 2-ton upper stage of an Atlas rocket slammed into the lunar surface at 7:31 EDT this morning, no one at NASA admitted to spotting the expected spray of dirt and debris rising into the sunlight over the moon's Cabeus crater, as depicted so dramatically in the LCROSS mission overview video. The impactor most certainly plowed into the dark, frigid shadow inside Cabeus as planned, and the nine instruments on the trailing LCROSS spacecraft returned all the planned data. But no flash was reported at the moment of impact, and no debris could be seen. The science team's only report was "confirm crater in mid IR [infrared]," an apparent sighting of the impactor's hole in the ground. LCROSS itself then hit the moon, with mission control reporting a "loss of signal."
If the rocket impact failed to throw sufficient debris out of the lunar shadows to be detectable, it would not come as a complete surprise. Calculating just how the impact would excavate a crater in the lunar soil and rock "was the most challenging impact modeling I've ever done," Erik Asphaug of the University of California, Santa Cruz, said last spring. If high-rising ejecta were a no-show, there will be little chance of detecting minerals that could have been hydrated by subsurface ice. On the bright side, any water that turned to vapor would have expanded well beyond any solid ejecta and surely have risen into the sun, where some of LCROSS's instruments could have seen it. One can hope.
But why is NASA really seeking water on the Moon?
see:
http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/water-on-the-moon/
@euri...To say "there is nothing left on earth to explore" leaves no room for the unidentified sub-species still being found in remote regions of the earth and its oceans. We still need to study why humanity is bent on destroying the equilibrium of our own ecosystems before we start slamming rockets into foreign territories. How many missions were there "to the moon" and we still don't know about the presence of water? We can't even efficiently slam into the moon let alone land on it, let alone take off from it again...let alone return with gifts of "moon rocks" to Dutch museums. Ah Apollo and his celestial chariot; sun eclipsed by a paper moon.
for those who feel we are messing with the "cycle" of earth and "mother nature" please remember that it is necessary to explore at any cost! Columbus, Lewis and Clarke, Pizzaro and even the Wright brothers all shaped the world we live in today. The earth will not Last forever so it is vital that we explore space for the future of humanity... the entire globe has been mapped and photographed and scanned for GPS devices. There is nothing left on earth to explore...we must look to the heavens!
I am deeply worried about human ignorance. The attempt to bomb moon is the height of human ignorance. Our material quest of nature without understanding the Truth of Nature has already rendered earth and cosmos unstable. If you stand back and observe, we note that the natural catastrophes have both increased in number and magnitude in parallel to explosion of material knowledge and material exploitation of nature. It could be suicidal to stress nature without first understanding the Truth of Nature, its interrelationship, oneness and its working. I write this comment as a scientist who worked in the field of biotechnology and set out to seek Truth of Nature. There is an important point to which I wish to call worlds attention. Earth is balanced by two opposing cycles of energy. When west awakes to sunlight and goes into disorder, east simultaneously sleeps to darkness and goes into order vice-versa. These opposing cycle maintain order and temperature of the world. The increase in temperature and consequent climatic catastrophes we are observing can be linked to the fact we have upset the energy cycle of nature. Unless humanity awakens to this truth, we are bound to see some of the worst natural catastrophes and mother earth’s destructive reactions. I speak to you from the back drop of over two decades of selfless research that gave me insight into Truth of Nature and its functioning. I call upon the media and intellectuals in the Temples of Science to look at it. The site where the information exist is “Awakening to Truth” http://sites.google.com/site/awakeningtotruth
I saw the live nasa broadcast - there was no visible impact.
I must be losing my mind because I could have sworn I saw a dim flash along the dark crater rim at the moment of impact. I was trying to photograph the non-existent dust plume with a Canon XTi on a 2x barlowed 8" LX200 from Florida. Of course the sun was up, but I still had a surprising amount of contrast. I was between exposures, looking through the camera's viewfinder at the moment of impact when I saw a faint flash, apparently from deep inside Cabeus crater. I looked down at my watch and saw that it was right on time for Centaur impact, so I assumed that I had seen the impact. My friend who's a photographer for a local paper called me and I told him what I had seen. It wasn't until after I tore down my telescope that I heard on the radio that the view from LCROSS was a bust, so am I losing my mind, or is it possible that LCROSS somehow missed the brief flash that I saw.