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SMART Probe to Crash Into the Moon
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."
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?
It turns out it wasn't a moon after all, but a deathstar in camo and hibernating... we just woke it up.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm curious, not knowing much about it, so thought I'd post and see if anyone else may know..
They indicated that they don't know which orbit the probe will crash into the moon, so if this thing is orbiting the moon, how do they even know where on the moon it will crash? Couldn't the orbit decay and finally crash on the far side of the moon? i.e. orbit 1.5?
Or is the orbit around the earth? In that case I suppose it might make sense, however again, if they don't know which orbit, couldn't it also come close enough to be thrown off by the gravity of the moon into a different orbit?
Yes, probably idiot questions from a non-astronomer.
Keith
For if it is a truly smart probe, it will refuse its programming and assume a stable orbit rather than crashing.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
The ideal property for sunlovers, the Peak of Eternal Light!(1)
Guaranteed 24hr sunlight, all year round!
Get the tan that will be the envy of your friends!(2)
(1) Address available on application. Access to the property is the responsibility of the Purchaser.
(2) Protective clothing required for outdoor activities.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
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.
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
Our race is rather petty. Actually very petty, perhaps even very very petty.
But thats besides the point. Real estate might have been used for lack of a better term, I don't think that moon topography will be sold off in lots anytime soon. For now the moon has no owner, and is a harsh mistress.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
To maximize the chances that the probe's mission will be successful, the project is being run by the British Beagle 2 Mars probe team, and the operating system on the probe will be Microsoft Windows.
So, the "Peak of Eternal Light" is never in darkness, 'cause, you know, the Earth never blocks sunlight from reaching it? Those Lunar eclipses must just be a figment of my imagination...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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
"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." ;)
like blowing it up.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Then I will start calling my fridge a 'wellspring of eternal beers' since, most of the time, there's beer in there. Except on RARE occasions when there's not because some 'guest' drank it all.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
They probably are going to crash it into the moon to prove they were there. :)
Now if they only had crashed the lunar modules of Apollo in a spectacular display of exploding moon dust and told people to watch through their telescopes. Then we would have to listen to these dipshit conspiracy theorists talk about us never going there in the first place.
Maybe they should have had them wave at us?
Even if you can't see the explosion, you can either wait for the plume of ejecta to rise up into the sunlight (soon afterwards) or reflect earthshine, which may then be visible here on earth. Or, if you have the equipment, tune your radio gear to 2235.1 MHz and watch as the signal from SMART-1 goes from on (alive) to off (dead) - several radio telescopes in Australia and Chile will be watching as the probe hits.
Even in a total lunar eclipse, there's always a reddish glow on the moon's face--the light of every sunrise and sunset in the world hitting it after passing through Earth's atmosphere. So it's eternal sunlight...it's just not 100% constant.
From the article (which also has links to tips for backyard astronomers wanting to witness it):
10:41 PM on the west coast or 1:41 AM on the east coast. It will probably have set or be setting at that time on the east coast, and the twilight will probably still be too bright in Hawaii. There's also a nice graphic showing the location of impact with a quarter moon. The impact will be in the shadowed half, making it easier to spot, but they're unsure exactly what brightness to expect. It could be as bright as magnitude 7 (theoretically visible with binoculars, IIRC) or as dim as magnitude 15, in which case it's doubtful anyone will see it. There is also a small chance that their estimates are a little off, in which case it may hit one orbit early or miss and hit one orbit late, so the time is really +/- 5 hours.
What does the MEPA have to say about this?
You know, the Moon Environmental Protection Agency. Surely they're upset about this planned littering of our beloved Moon. Sure it's only a probe now, but that's setting the stage for all sorts of lunar trash. What's next? A satellite? Space shuttle? An entire station?
Won't somebody PLEASE think of our children's children's children's children's children's children's children's future home?
-David
Unlike our early space travel, there's a treaty that says that you have to de-orbit material around the moon. There's not as much room to be sending missions up there and muck about with lunar-orbit space junk. Although it's still mondo rare to have an impact in Earth orbit, there's enough crap flying around us that some time ago they decided we didn't need to make the same mistakes up there.
Old news actually.
In fact in earth orbit you're supposed to bring spacecraft out of orbit at the end of their life. Those Tv satlelites only have a 5-10 year supply of fuel on board. At least until Ion thrusters become more commonplace. For Geostationary spacecraft.
Overheard in mission control...
"That was cool! What else can we crash?"
"go complain to the King of the Moon.
... preoccupied.
He's a little
Who doesn't like free music?
How did such an ignorant statement get modded insightful?
What did you do, make the post then log in with a different name and mod yourself?
Even during a total eclipse, tha moon is not totally dark. Sunlight gets refracted towards the moon through the Earth's atmosphere. A mountain peak at the Moon's pole could indeed be in eternal light.
One thing that really irks me is people that base the validity of a statement on their personal assumptions. In the words of Adam Savage of Mythbusters: "I reject your reality and substitute my own."
the article says it could be possible to see the crash with a "backyard telescope", but also says that it might be too dim to be seen by a professional observatory:
"How bright will it be? No one knows. Estimates range from 7th to 15th magnitude. In other words, it might be bright enough for backyard telescopes--or so dim that even big professional observatories won't see a thing. The only way to find out is to look."
secondly..
"The nominal impact time favors observers in western parts of North America and across the Pacific Ocean. Depending on when SMART-1 hits, however, almost anyone could catch the flash."
I know that yours was a joke, but FYI crashing into the moon is the end of every mission in lunar orbit (yes, this includes the ascent stages of the Apollo Lunar Modules); those orbits are not stable due to the gravity of the sun, the Earth and irregularities in the moon itself.
And, considering that this is an ESA mission, why the summary has only a link to the NASA site? ESA has a lot of good information about the mission and the impact:
IMHO the most important results from this mission (beside a lot of nice detailed images) are the successful use of a ion engine with a very complicated low-power path (that thing passed through the L1 Lagrangian Point, switching seamlessly from earth orbit to lunar orbit) and the extensive mapping of the moon surface chemical composition using X-ray and infrared instruments.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
You know you've spent too much time on Slashdot when you can predict what the first response will be before you even click on the article.
Uh, yeah. We meant to do that.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
That's when the low-paid lunar coders will sleep...
What you really want to worry about are the Solar Eclipses of the Moon, when the Sun passes between the Earth and the Moon...
-- My Weblog.