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NASA To Trigger Massive Explosion On the Moon In Search of Ice
Hugh Pickens writes "NASA is preparing to launch the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, which will fly a Centaur rocket booster into the moon, triggering a six-mile-high explosion that scientists hope will confirm whether water is frozen in the perpetual darkness of craters near the moon's south pole. If the spacecraft launches on schedule at 12:51 p.m. Wednesday, it will hit the moon in the early morning hours of October 8 after an 86-day Lunar Gravity-Assist, Lunar Return Orbit that will allow the spacecraft time to complete its two-month commissioning phase and conduct nearly a month of science data collection of polar crater measurements before colliding with the moon just 10 minutes behind the Centaur." (Continues, below.)
"The cloud from the Centaur rocket booster will kick up 350 metric tons of debris that should spread six miles above the surface of the moon, hitting the sunlight and making it visible to amateur astronomers across North America. Over the final four minutes of its existence, as LCROSS follows the same terminal trajectory as the Centaur, the spacecraft will train its instruments and cameras on the debris cloud, searching it for the chemical signature of water. Previous spacecraft and ground-based instruments have detected signs of hydrogen near the moon's poles, and scientists are split over whether that is from ice that could have arrived through the impact of comets or by other means. Despite all the serious scientific talk about hydrogen signatures and lunar regolith, flying a rocket booster into the moon at 5,600 mph to trigger a massive explosion is just flat-out cool. 'We're certainly going to be making a big splash,' says Kimberly Ennico, the LCROSS payload scientist. 'We're going to see something, but I don't know what to expect. I know on the night of the impact, I'll be running on adrenaline.'"
They are using explosives to write NASA in the moon for all people to see. You won't succeed where Chairface failed!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
am I the only one who thinks we should blow everything up *here* before we start blowing everything up elsewhere?
Oh yea, remember that 2002 or whatever make of The Time Machine? With the fragmented moon? Lets just hope this time it doesn't come crashing down on Earth.
I really can't tell if this article is serious or not.
We are in a financial crisis, and the government wants to see if there is ice on the moon? There's plenty on this planet. I can make some for you in my freezer and you can save 20 billion dollars.
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
"'We're going to see something, but I don't know what to expect. I know on the night of the impact, I'll be running on adrenaline.'"
:)
And when the "massive explosion" identifies an undiscovered fault and splits the moon in half, radically changing the gravitational pull, disrupting global tidal patterns and forever altering the global weather pattern, knowing whether there is water on the moon would be deemed inconsequential.
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
Our intelligence is that they are storing WMD's on the moon.
Like, this is part of a military plot to demonstrate to the Chinese (and others) that the moon is U.S. territory....
NASA should recruit them. They'd be the experts on triggering massive explosions.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Whoa, will this be visble from Earth? That would rock!
SO, NASA is going the way of Mythbusters - from an organization devoted to scientific inquiry into one that just blows things up for kicks...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
I can't wait to hear what the crackpots over on Youtube are going to make of *that* experiment.
Will it be "NASA attacks alien city on the Moon"?
Or some nonsense about reptilians / greys / 2012 / Planet-X / NWO / Morgellons / HAARP / chemtrails, etc, etc.
Only time will tell. All we really know is that it will be unbelievably stupid.
In fact, it already is.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
From TFA, "For Kimberly Ennico, the LCROSS payload scientist, those worries are focused on a critical moment less than two hours into the mission, when controllers will signal the spacecraft to turn itself on."
The shuttle delay has caused this to be delayed as well. If it doesn't launch by Saturday, it'll have to wait a while.
Here's a reuters article about it.
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN0313466120090615
Will they also integrate a cheese flavor detector? How many thousands of years has human kind been wondering what flavor of cheese the moon is?
My hope is a nice sharp cheddar, but with all those holes you can see on the surface I have a sinking feeling that it will probably be Swiss.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
So they are going to blow the moon up... this... this just seems like a bad idea and something I read in a book...
Ave Molech Setting
"I can confirm the location of the Moon, but I cannot confirm the existence of the Moon"
"That's no Moon... at least, not anymore!"
Anybody want my mod points?
Will it be possible to watch through binoculars or a telescope?
12:50 - press return.
come up with an Illudium PU-36 payload for that Atlas?
I hope it's a fairly small charge; I wouldn't want a Moon-shattering KABOOM!
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
You're right, they probably didn't think of that. It's not like NASA is full of rocket scientists or something.
ZOMG!!!! A massive explosion!!! A six mile high explosion!!!!
Or would that actually be a very, very modest explosion (especially in astronomical terms) triggering a six mile high debris plume?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
I don't think much thought has been put in this by NASA.
Lol.
It's ok to blow things up if you just want to know if "there is water there."
For instance, I just blew up a watermelon 'to see if there was water in there.' It was moist, leading me to believe that there is, in fact, water in there. Then I blew up a junk yard Ford Pinto so I could verify that there was not, in fact, "water in there." As I suspected, there wasn't.
Well, its about time.
December 21st, 2012?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Please tell me you are joking. The moon is *NOT* a light object in any scale NASA can significantly affect.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Cosmos 2009?...
Since the Moon has about 1/6 the gravity of Earth, this 6 mile high explosion would be about, what, 1 mile high on Earth? So that's the equivalent of a firecracker in Denver. Meh.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Unfiortunately, the advanced civilization living peaceably beneath the surface for millennia, will suddenly begin arming for war.
We have the technology... the time is now... science can wait no longer... children are our future. America can, should, must, and will blow up the moon!
<stolen>http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/1c81d0df12/mr-show-america-blows-up-the-moon-from-thaffner</stolen>
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
Big explosion. What are the odds this would be visible from earth? Naked eye? Or With a decent telescope?
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
If the US nearly went to war because of the nuclear arms being shipped to Cuba, what will the Martians think about a demonstration of military power on an uninhabited moon? Without proper diplomatic relationships between Mars & Earth, I doubt that diplomacy will be able to calm their frayed nerves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csj7vMKy4EI
The launch has been delayed since Endeavor wasn't able to launch on Saturday as planned. Endeavor is currently slated to launch tomorrow to ISS and a new date hasn't been picked for this mission.
Story here
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has anyone studied the dynamics of explosions in cheese? you shouldn't just be willy nilly setting off massive explosions in large chunks of cheese until you study all the possible ramifications
i mean it could trigger a horrible cheesequake
even just a little preliminary search by myself on google reveals that a cheesequake has become a large area devoid of human habitation!:
http://www.stateparks.com/cheesequake.html
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I know we aren't blasting to make way for new condos on the moon... but it sounds strangely similar to the Time Machine movie's plot in the "near" future, where we split the moon accidentally and cause mass destruction here on Earth as a result... at least I won't have to be an Eloi.
the morlocks, if your live past the impending ice age that will happen after this. Come on I love NASA, but they have on occasion miscalculated things, this makes me worry. Then again if it all goes wrong, it could be the best thing to happen for humanity. It would pretty much be the end of all wars on the planet.
...to blow the bloody doors off!
An intriguing solution to a problem that should never have existed in the first place...
Look at a picture of the moon. Go on I'll wait.
OK, did you see the craters covering the surface? Look again if you want.
Those are quite big no? In fact, they're bigger than the rocket booster - about half a million of them have diameters bigger than 1km (according to wikipedia). Since not one of those 500,000 (some of which are fairly recent) has had any significant effect on the moons orbit I'd say we're safe.
That's where I keep all my stuff!!
... this means WAR!!!!
as long as they keep that metric vs "standard" thing straight when packing the C-4, we should all be ok ...
http://www.thundarr.com/images/21.jpg
Darwin Enforcement Agent
(AP) NASA announces that they have discovered that there were in fact trace amounts of ice on the moon.
"We detected a modest amount of water by blowing up a small part of the moon, but is not really sufficient to allow for future use."
Critics argue that NASA may have destroyed the precious lunar water, damaging the lunar system irreparably.
"They blew it up, I tell you. This is a travesty. It's all just testosterone, blowing things up. We thought we were changing away from this white male blowing up the moon business. Now, future life will not be able to evolve on the moon without water.", said the head of the leftist Environmental Action Front.
Other critics disagreed. "Drill, baby, drill", argued the head of the Chamber of Christian Commerce. "There's probably plenty more water on the moon. NASA couldn't have blown it up. It's the moon for Pete's sake...besides, there's no such thing as evolution anyways... "
President Obama's press secretary forgot where he was for a moment, then blamed the launch of the space craft on George Bush.
Dick Cheney replied that blowing up part of the moon was for national security but regretted that there will not be sufficient water to waterboard alien terrorists with.
Aliens from Alpha Centauri expressed their outrage through their ambassadors at Area 51. Ambassador Xwillxiahch told human reporters "First, you shot down our spaceship, after we showed you how to make pyramids, and now you do this. You humans are far too aggressive. We could have told you that there was water on the moon". Are you going to go killed the fish on Europa to see if they are there...oh, there's fish on Europa...didn't know that, did you HUMANS.."
This is my sig.
Pissed that all their maps will be wrong after this.
I for one look forward to our future of savagery, sorcery and super science.
We are in a financial crisis, and the government wants to see if there is ice on the moon? There's plenty on this planet. I can make some for you in my freezer and you can save 20 billion dollars.
Making ice on earth wastes energy and causes global warming, you insensitive clod!!! We need to put some weight behind sustainability in ice creation. We can't afford to keep spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to fuel our frivolous, wasteful American consumption! Better to get it from somewhere else! I have gone without ice for as long as I can remember, and you should, too, in fact I'm going to pass a law that says you have to live like me and give up your wasteful ice consuming habits!!
After LRO decouples, the launch vehicle has to be set down on the moon anyway so it doesn't become orbital space junk. LCROSS will get science out of what would otherwise just be housekeeping.
The impact will be visible from some places on Earth if you have a good scope- >10". There's a google group to co-ordinate amateur observations with the pros: http://groups.google.com/group/lcross_observation
Anybody got a number for NASA?
I thought I'd call and let them know that they can get ice around the corner at the quick shop for 90cents a bag.
I'm just sayin'........
....When you HIRE someone to BUILD something, it STIMULATES the economy....And NASA budget has been to target of cuts as recently as this week, it was even slashdotted. Bad anonymous coward, no cookie!
I think you meant: Hell, it's about time.
Where do we go from here?
Sure, the LCOSS is intended to crash, but I bet NASA will announce eventually that the probe missed, made a soft landing instead and is now sending data from the surface. Way to lower expectations, guys.
The mission will supposedly cost $78 million. A lot of money to the average person... but a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions we're wasting on needless wars and bailing out failed banks and automotive companies. Guess which I think is being better spent?
If there is a chance for water there, there may also be a chance for life. Hitting that area in this manner may just reduce that probability to zero.
Many years from now I will fondly tell my grandchildren of the great moon in the night's sky, illuminating the earth with its pale beauty, right about where the great meteorite belt now drifts.
Are we sure this is a good idea?
http://xkcd.com/397/
yep we have grown tired of blowing stuff up here on earth
time for some interplanetary fireworks
and hopefully after we are bored with that a extrasolar pyrotechnical extravaganza will fulfill the need
until its time for intergalactic shock and awe
all complete with 3-D WHEEEEEEE !!!!!! glasses !!
cant wait to see it
Music the Paint dancefloor the canvas your body the brush
And blow it up?!?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
... how high the debris fallout will be, since gravity on the moon is very low. The lunar surface is made up of very fine dust, how long will it take for dust to settle? Will dust escape out of the lunar surface into space?
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This is gonna seriously tick off Ignignokt and Err. They're from the moon.
This will inevitably be viewed by the inhabitants of the moon as an act of war! Their retribution will be swift and deadly, as they retaliate by throwing rocks at us. Our days are numbered!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
That's no moon, it's a pair of moons!
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
That's no moon, it's a target.
rewriting history since 2109
Several S-IVB stages from Saturn V rockets impacted the moon in the 1960s and '70s. All of them were more massive than the little Centaur.
At least one Apollo mission left seismic sensors on the moon, which recorded the effects of S-IVB impacts on later flights.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the solar system, aliens prepare a missile to launch at earth to see whether there is any carbon-based life there.
These things don't run on short term timescales. This project completed it's design review phase (suggesting many months of design prior to that) in February '06, see the citations on the project's wikipedia page
The economy was doing just fine, in fact very well, until about halloween of 2008. We're not just going to dump this mission b/c the banks are having a rough spot. The money is spent, the project has inertia too.
Two, in 2001 a "small" impact was detected by the instrument packages that Apollo left behind, however, it was probably too small to give a visible crater.
In 1953, a visual observation of an impact was made, however, no 'before' picture of the area exists so the only sure thing is that there is a fresh crater in the right position and size.
Denied, prior art. Robert Heinlein wrote advertising on the moon in 1949 in "The Man who Sold the Moon". (Or maybe the publication counts as 1950?)
I seem to remember that the Chinese or some other nationality already did this? If I remember correctly they made a spacecraft or probe that was specially designed to smash into surface of the moon, penetrate as deep as possible and eject material so that it could be analyzed for content...specifically for ice.
So what is NASA's twist? Just a big rocket?
I say, go to the next level, the US has plenty of high tech conventional explosive ordinance just hanging around, lets try something special. Heck for extra points, launch a mini-nuke, and set it off on impact.
I guess the concern here would be if the rocket failed you may have it go down over something important on earth like a city or something, which could cause some complications.
I can guarantee that it will be very cloudy at my house (or wherever I try to move my telescope to) during the early morning hours of October 8.
See my Home Theater
Foreign countries are not good enough to bomb anymore?
1) Find ice on the moon.
2) Harvest so-called ice as giant cubes.
3) Parody popular animated sci-fi comedy show.
4) ?????
5) Profit!
1) Blow up moon.
2) Scan dust for evidence of ice.
3) ?????
4) Designer babies!
How much of the available water will be permanently dispersed by this experiment? What will be the effects of a 6-mile-high explosion on any water-bearing subsurface features? It seems to me that NASA is making establishing a permanent human presence on the moon harder by this rather sophomoric stunt.
This is not a self-referential sig.
Do we really need to do it again?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090610/sc_space/japaneseprobetoslamintomoontoday
I just hope they do it during a full moon - so they make sure and get it all.
Mr. Show - America Blows Up The Moon
A modicum of snuff can be quite efficacious.
Stephen Baldwin and Dirk Benedict.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It might slow down the speed at which it is moving away :-)
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
I'm thinking the experiment would work better when the moon is, err, at 1/2 (can't remember the name) - that is, when the light side of the moon is sort of perpendicular to your line of view from the earth. That way, you get a 'sideways' view of the debris cloud, instead of straight on (which might be a bit hard to see). Also, I bet having dark space as the background will make the cloud show up better than having the lit surface of the moon - better contrast.
AP - "When asked how much explosives are being sent, the NASA Armorer answered: "A metric buttload""
We should be good! ;)
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Ooops, I got my Slashdot threads mixed up. I blame Firefox.
If I am not mistaken, this launch was 'bumped' to allow the shuttle to take off Wednesday morning, 2009-06-16 at about 5:40 hours US Eastern DST
The LCROSS is now scheduled to lift off on Thursday, 2009-06-18 at 17:12 hours US Eastern DST.
This has been in the news for like all day and most of last night.
It feels like a special episode of Myth Buster that every end of episode ends with a big explosion in the name of science. Does science and research have to be destructive? What are the potential consequence of the explosion? Who owns the moon? Who gives the right to NASA to blow up a rocket in the moon? What if North Korea wants to performance the same scientific experiment? Will that be acceptable?
Yes, they did! While it was good for the first 24 episodes the second "series" really sucked more as if that's possible.
Of course, it's Sept 13, 1999 all over again if they try it!
Here is the TRUE evidence of what happened that fateful day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npaRNpjV5IE .
They don't want you to know! The Truth is Out there somewhere... who the heck knows... someone does and they are not telling!!!
Did anyone else notice that while all the articles provided the time that the impact would happen, none provided a time zone reference so that those who want to plan to watch it know what time they need to be outside with their telescope? Just my 2 cents on the reporting.....
It is clearly the fiscally responsible thing to do.
Really? Slamming garbage into the surface of the moon is the fiscally responsible thing to do? How about about not littering the moon's surface with debris and send a probe to search for water? Oh, wait that will cost more money. Hmmm....looks like history is repeating itself here and we are going to litter and pollute everywhere we go simply because it is cheaper.
What if they accidentally blow up the first bootprints on the moon?
At least that Troll comment was deserved.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
Great! Now we have to prepare for retaliation by Moon Nazis!
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
It might not be a good idea to anger the Mooninites. Their Quad Laser is quite an effective weapon, you know.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
So you're saying that the rocket could hit the Giant Enemy Moon's weak spot for MASSIVE DAMAGE?
The enemies of Democracy are
You didn't wait at all! You just continued to talk before he had a chance to look at a picture of the moon. Not cool.
Maybe the difference is that they didn't create a monster explosion, but... Japan just crash landed their "Kaguya" (SELENE) lunar orbiter into the Moon. The Kaguya had been orbiting the Moon for 17 months since its launch in September 2007. Strangely (to me) they are not released pictures until this November.
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2009/06/20090611_kaguya_e.html
The President: Jiminy Jumpin' Jesus, I can't believe we're gonna pay that madman. I got nukes out the ying-yang. Just let me launch one, for God's sake.
Commander Gilmour: Sir. Are you suggesting that we blow up the moon?
...
The President: Would you miss it?
Well, you know, the Moon is a harsh mistress.
They should have sold donor nameplates for the "lander". Or likenesses.
I would have paid a nice dinner's worth of money to be able to send select pictures of my associates crashing into the moon, at sufficient velocity to create a 6 mile high plume.
Will this plume be visible from Earth with the naked eye?
--
$tar -xvf
I'm willing to be that they are attempting a 6.214 mile high explosion. Why? Because that is 10km. Good to see NASA using a civilized measurement system, too bad the press/media doesn't.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
how did they even begin to think about this? a couple of NASA scientists where sitting around at a board meting then all of a sudden say "hey we've got a couple extra billions lets check the moon for water!" "but how do we do that?" "uh....with an explosion :D".
Why is NASA using non-SI units again? Didn't they learn that lesson from the last time it caused a screw up?
Squirrel!
Some fundamentalist Christians would like to create a large cross shape on the moon using something like a lunar bulldozer or grader. Not only would the whole world see the symbol of Christianity, but it would demoralize Muslims to have their religious symbol defaced by infidels.
and it didn't go so well... http://www.metacafe.com/watch/561211/7upp/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csj7vMKy4EI
"Lookout Moon, America's gonna getcha -
gonna go kaboom - was nice to have met ya -
'cos ya don't mess around with God's America!"
I just can't help but imagine if NK has a space program and decided to send astronauts to the moon, what would USA, or the world think?
The Moon's mass gets altered fairly often as it is hit by meteors -- just like the Earth's mass does. One more relatively tiny spacecraft isn't going to have any measurable effect; the laws of physics don't change, even in the interest of anti-US hysteria. All the ejecta will fall back to the surface, so there's an insignificant mass gain, nothing more.
Shall we at least try to think about this a little? Jeez.
If the only way we have to determine if there's water on a planet (or moon, in this case) is to blow part of it up, then maybe we shouldn't be going out there, yet.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
My Dad always said "If you aim for the moon, you'll probably miss."
Shows you what he knew...
Assuming they didn't mess up on the metric>feet>metric conversions.
http://www.pbfcomics.com/archive_b/PBF105-The_Schlorbians_Strike_Again.jpg
We know by now that nature is vulnerable. Moon is relatively small. Why make a big explosion on it? One can use drilling for research.
The system Earth-Moon can be destabilized by such explosions.
To the Moon! Alice! TO THE MOON!
Actually this reminds me more of the Pave The Earth movement.
http://www.geocities.com/southbeach/1380/pave.html
Which actually ties in with CHROME THE MOON!
http://www.geocities.com/southbeach/1380/crmoon.html
Shooting a projectile into the moon is minor. Meh.
Out of curiosity, has anyone outside the States offered an opinion on what the U.S.N.A.S.A. is doing?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)