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SMART Probe to Crash Into the Moon

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the player-nasa-cratered dept.

cyberbian writes "Amateur astronomers will be excited to note that they can witness the impact of the SMART-1 probe crashing into the moon. The impact is scheduled for the morning of September 2nd (PDT). From the article: 'There's nothing wrong with the spacecraft, which is wrapping up a successful 3-year mission to the Moon. SMART-1's main job was to test a European-built ion engine. It worked beautifully, propelling the craft in 2003 on a unique spiral path from Earth to the Moon. From lunar orbit, SMART-1 took thousands of high-resolution pictures and made mineral maps of the Moon's terrain. One of its most important discoveries was a "Peak of Eternal Light," a mountaintop near the Moon's north pole in constant, year-round sunlight. Peaks of Eternal Light are prime real estate for solar-powered Moon bases."

4 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. A DUMB probe would have crashed into the Earth by adnonsense · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The next step is to build a probe which doesn't crash at all ;).

    On an entirely more geeky note, I wonder if any of the Apollo ASLEP packages are still up and running and whether they would detect the impact?

  2. krunk smash! by gsn · · Score: 3, Interesting
    nonsense - ESA is crashing it deliberately. From the TFA

    But now SMART-1 is running low on fuel. It has to come down sometime--and soon--so ESA mission scientists decided to crash it in a place where the crash can be seen from Earth and studied.


    You can learn a lot from crashes - how craters form and the composition of the ejecta. Astronomy Krunk style is still useful! Krunk smash! NASA did something similar with the deep impact probe and comet tempel.

    Sad thing here is they have no idea how bright its going to be - TFA says anything between 7 and 15 mag (5 mag difference is a factor of 100 in flux) so we may not see anything really.
    --
    Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
  3. Re:Real Estate by phulegart · · Score: 5, Interesting

    the sooner we stop thinking about the moon as some mystical magical pixie home where ancient one-eyed green cheese eating creatures hide from our attempts to photograph them, and start thinking about in terms of real estate with a long-ass trip to the beach.... ... the sooner we will advance off the planet and into our own solar system with any kind of manned progress.

    The moon is not a rainforest we have to save so that we can continue to breathe. We should avoid blowing it up, but other than that, it's a big hunk of rock we just haven't put to good use yet.

    --
    "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -D. Adams
  4. Re:Real Estate by kfg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I hate hearing such business-evolved terms such as "real estate"

    Real estate is not a business evolved term, in fact it's rather the opposite. It's a fuedalism evolved term.

    "Real" means "royal" and "estate" means "status"; real estate is that property, status; held by royal grant, one's condition under the power of the king.

    If you don't like the term applied to the moon; go complain to the King of the Moon.

    KFG