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Front Row Seats To NASA's Lunar Impact
itwbennett writes "Tomorrow morning at 7:30 EDT, NASA is going to crash a probe into the moon as part of its LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite) mission, the main purpose of which is to discover if there's any water on the moon. 'If you happen to have a 10-12" telescope (or larger) then you might be able to see the plume from your backyard,' says blogger Peter Smith. 'For the rest of us, the impact will be streamed live over the web in a few places. NASA will have a feed, beginning at 6:15 EDT. The NASA feed includes live footage from the spacecraft itself as well as expert commentary and other goodies. Astronomy service SLOOH is offering a double-shot of earth-bound feeds, with one feed from New Hampshire and the other from Arizona. The SLOOH feeds start at 6:30 am EDT.'" Update: Matt_dk adds a link to a viewing guide to the impact, writing that "Amateur astronomers need a 10-inch or bigger telescope to make observations."
NASA have set up a webpage for the LCROSS Observation Campaign: http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/observation.htm
By the way, it is at 11.30 UTC for those who don't know how far their timezone is from EDT.
It's a pretty safe bet that the impact of the Centaur module will awaken some ancient lunarian race which will immediately begin waging a campaign to subjugate Earth once and for all, so it would behoove you to watch one of these feeds in order to be prepared for the inevitable.
... GORDON .....
Flash!!!
They are going to be pissed! http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f308/jimmyisgay1/mooninites.jpg
I wish that the "Mythbusters" guys would fly the probe into the Moon with one of them screaming, "I wanna see something blow up!"
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
that the aliens wont get too upset at us.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Is it really so hard to set up an excavation robot on the moon that we have to keep dropping things on it?!?
Also...
Trying to get rid of mental image of Man on the Moon wearing a blindfold while smoking a cigarette.
That'll teach the Lunar People who owns this solar system!
More seriously, I was looking forward to watching this in my telescope, but it looks like it's going to rain for the next 24 hours straight.
Not a typewriter
And the impactor does contain trace amounts of mercury and other heavy metals.
NasaTV Feeds at different resolutions:
100k/s, 320/240
200k/s, 320/240
500k/s, 480x360 (I think)
100k/s, 640/480
All Windows Media format
Real media format
Quicktime
For those of you who need to watch it in absolute realtime, I've found that all the yahoo feeds (windows media) whilst being the best video quality are generally about 1-2 minutes behind realtime. Realmedia is normally about 5-10 seconds behind realtime.
"When I was a boy, blowing up the moon was just a beautiful dream."
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
When that probe hits deep within the crater, it will finally puncture the Moon's skin and we all know what happens to a water balloon!
Say good-bye to the moon base et. al.
I just saw this video on CNN
There are also a bunch of videos on you tube
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
But they really missed an opportunity with this one: LCROSS was sent to find RUGBYs (Remote Underground BaYous of course)
Super Number One, a podcast about all things geek
Maybe we should think twice before launching an attack against an Utu-class planetoid?
Mutineer's Moon
http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0671720856/0671720856.htm
TomB
"You can't take the sky from me..."
Looks like NASA has launched a large white glass plate and placed it in near earth orbit. It is sitting exactly in the line of sight from Earth to moon. People normally see through this the real Moon. But at the appointed time, NASA will project an image using lasers and create an illusion of a spacecraft crashing into moon, and then turn off the projection. Ha, haa, NASA, we got you. We got you all figured it out. Your jig is up. We will not be denied our meal ticket no matter what you do.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Get out of your Mum's basement and get a job. Only then can your angry shouting about wasting time and money bare any credence.
Where are these people and what is it exactly they are saying?
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
NBC Announced this morning that they will be airing the coverage of the impact live on the Today Show.
So NASA found some lunar aliens on the moon in a crater to play catch with? Awesome!
Don't feed the trolls, but how about moderating them?
This particular program, like most NASA programs, was funded and largely paid for a long time ago. To put a stop to this project simply because of a problem in our economy today would erase the benefits of these sunk costs, and instead only eliminiate a small portion of costs that remain - the launch and analysis. That'd be like building a car, and then driving it into a lake simply because you couldn't afford the gas. Sure, it makes sense on the surface that you can't drive it, but why throw it away?
BTW, I know that with the car analogy you could leave the car in the driveway. Apparently NASA projects aren't exactly like that, and have huge startup and shutdown costs, plus the issue of getting the timing just right.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
If water on the moon is so difficult to get to that one has to throw a satellite at the surface at 5600 mph, how likely is it that man will be able to inhabit the moon?
Never mind the issues of building vacuum-sealed living quarters and getting mining equipment to the moon and the current low-power density of the solar energy generation mechanism most likely to be used on the moon, how would you get water up there if you have to send a satellite the mass of a full-sized SUV to dig a hole as deep as the length of a football field?
It raises the question of why we're spending any time at all on the moon. It can't be lived on, it's unlikely to harbor life, its geology has already been explored. Someone tell me what the point is...
those amazon women are going to be pissed that we penetrated their nether regions with our manly probes!
whatcouldpossiblygowrong? This reminds me of the scene in the 2008 whatever version of the Time Machine where the moon was blasted on to make condos or someshit and it went horribly wrong.
Seriously guys, is it our right to bomb the moon? and permanently scar her chi forever? Rather than being passive observer's of this horrible Astrological act of Terrorism by the evil U.S. Government we should all be contemplating the beauty of the moon, and focusing compassion towards her to help her through what will surely be a difficult and painful time for her. Join countless others on this date in a movement of group meditation to help mend the scars that our less compassionate brethren will bequeath upon the heavens!
/sarcasm
In all seriousness, I am really excited about this. Hopefully if we do discover large concentrations of water it will be an ass kick in the space industry to get our act together and get onto building a colony =)
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Don't forget that if you're laying off everyone working on the project you're increasing unemployment and decreasing the amount those people are spending -- while I don't usually take that as a good argument for maintaining federal programs, maintaining useful programs that happen to maintain peoples employment seems like a decent idea, particularly for an administration that takes a fairly Keynesian view.
Of course, I'm a spacecraft engineer and not an economist so my view may be a little skewed.
http://www.timeanddate.com/counters/customcounter.html?day=9&month=10&year=2009&hour=11&min=31&sec=30&p0=0
He'll save every one of us!
[UID-HeinzIntel]
Wouldn't it be cool if the two feeds from either side of the country could be combined into one of those MagicEye images so we could watch in 3D? Heck yeah...3D r0x0rs!
I know this impact will be very small compared to the total momentum of the Moon in its orbit with the Earth. But it will have some effect. How much more quickly (or slowly) will the Moon and Earth escape each other's pull and travel apart, ahead of (or behind) the original schedule?
--
make install -not war
Why does NASA continue to do BS work?
I am ashamed that after over 40 years after landing on the moon that the BEST thing we can do is shoot multi million dollar satellites at it, and waste tax payers money.
If it was me, I would shutdown NASA completely, and make a more business oriented space program.
Now, let us see if someone made a math error, and they miss the moon entirely.
better hope it doesn't put a wobble in the moons orbit and screw things up here on Earth. The moon may be covered with impact craters but I think most of that happened long before people and we don't know if there was any effect on Earth as a result of large impacts on the moon.
"We're sailors on the moon, we carry a harpoon, but there ain't no whales so tell this tale and sing our whaling tune!"
We're actually gonna nuke the moon!
http://www.imao.us/docs/NukeTheMoon.htm
Why do we need to do this? Seems like a waste of funds to me? So what if we find water on the moon? Cant we use this money for books for school kids or something.
...and other places. Viewing parties across the country in fact.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/impact/event_index.html
f u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmng
It would really suck if the lunar substrate turned out to be far more rigid (what with the cold of space) than we thought, and this impact set up a resonant frequency that shook all the surface lunar dust OFF, and the Earth's gravity drew it all in, causing the Ultimate Lunar Winter. It's The End Of The World As We Know It.
Holy crap! I think I just invented the next Michael Bay movie!
I do hereby claim 25% of the movie revenue. If only to make it too unprofitable (to stop the madness).
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
The site linked to in this story doesn't appear to support OS's other than windows and mac for streaming video.
Maybe (hopefully) I'm not looking hard enough but at first glance their is no linux support.
Good thing I have a telescope.
"we don't know if there was any effect on Earth as a result of large impacts on the moon."
Large impacts? What do you mean, large impacts? The probe is the size of a car, man!
here.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
As is the norm for 99% of all astronomical events like comets, meteor showers, space station flyovers, etc. this one, too, will be obscured by dense cloud cover for anyone living in the Chicago area. (Argh!)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
...a 14 inch one and yes IT'S EVEN TELESCOPIC !
Call me kooky, call me a greenie. I can't see how this can even be regarded as a 'scientific' experiment. I'd put it under the same banner as: "Lets fire a bullet at someone's head to see if there's a brain in there".
Surely a little lunar robot with drilling capabilities is less drastic than "Let's blow this fucker up and see what we can see"?
I invoke the chewbacca defence: It just doesn't make sense...
the web feed is going to choke
And, they are 10 years late!
I think I am going to be screwed in South America where i live. The days are getting longer, so it will still be day light out even though I am in that EDT time zone.
Living in Chile
I've got a 13-inch -- oh, telescope? Damn.
I am reminded of endoftheworld.flv with this story. I know this rocket we're sending to the moon isn't all that powerful, but imagine... the shockwave from the blast being strong enough to change the orbit of the moon around earth by even 1/10th of a degree could possibly mess up the oceans so badly that we have just killed ourselves... and then it wouldn't matter if the kangaroos survive the nukes...
Shit guys!! We r fuct...
Not flamebait, but +5 Troll.
JockTroll is a slashdot treasure.
Not sarcasm. Posts like these demonstrate how valuable amazing trolls are to a community.
Nearly 90% of the US films end up in an explosion, either it is a building, or a ship, car, mountain, some people, but something always to be exploded.
I was in the USA and I noticed there other strange things. It is considered to be shameful to walk. The sidewalks are narrow, the green light for pedestrians light up just for about 10 seconds, so that one has nearly to run to cross a street. Automobile roads look like the rivers of steel, like a new geographical phenomena.
If one does not spoil nature, does not pollute badly, does not explode something big time, he/she is a sissy.
I am not trying to bash the good old USA, but this feature of the US culture comes to the front line of human civilization, as the US becomes the only world "super power". We will see more and more "magnificent" explosions. Now even on the moon! Didn't you hear about drilling?
If billions of people on our planet start to reproduce this way of life, as what seems to be happening already to some degree, not only our planet will not bear it, but the whole planetary system will collapse.
The boffin-hyped"plume" wasn't visible with ten inch nor twenty inch amateur telescopes. It wasn't even visible with 200 inches telescope that Palomar Observatory has! PR nightmare, bwahaha.
The moon, and space beyond that, is the ultimate high ground (unless we find a practical way to travel beyond the solar system, or into other dimensions.)
Look at history - the history of mankind is the history of war. Thus, if we want to achieve and maintain military superiority, and bolster the ability to defend ourselves, we must continue to strive for the high ground.
Can't get much more cohesive, comprehensive, and practical than that.