NASA's LCROSS Moon Impact Mission Provides Great Data

Several sources are sending us reports of NASA's recent LCROSS Moon impact mission. While the visual results seem to be less than stunning, LCROSS Principal Investigator Anthony Colaprete said the initial results produced "the data we need," but refused to say anything about "water or no water." "The goal of this dual impact was to have the Centaur upper stage impact first, allowing the LCROSS spacecraft to observe close-up the results of the impact. In fairness, the view from LCROSS as it approached the moon was amazing — even though there was no obvious visual evidence of impact, which early data from the infrared camera on the craft indicates did occur. What happens next is a whole lot of math and science. The LCROSS spacecraft included nine individual science instruments. This suite of instruments consisted of one visible camera, two near-infrared cameras, two mid-infrared cameras, a visible light spectrometer, two near-infrared spectrometers, and a photometer. All nine of those instruments were gathering data simultaneously and streaming that data back to Earth."

Comments

Why we should blow up the moon...

[BuddyFriend]

"The International Space Station is still going strong, but you can only budget so many taxpayer dollars for the study of toilet-flushing, spiderweb-weaving and astronaut-humping in zero gravity. Eventually people are going to get wise. You gotta do something, so messing up the moon is an awesome idea. And don’t bring up Mars, because that’s still a sore subject. Not gonna happen. They did the math, and it turns out that it was all just made up by Bush after he accidentally mixed his Zoloft with three Tom Collinses."

http://digg.com/d316nFP

Re:Provides great data?

[countertrolling]

I say let's give them their Nobel now.