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

Provides great data?

[Kemanorel]

For great justice!

We will never colonize the moon

[sakdoctor]

The moon has a completely insurmountable 1.2 second ping.
Even if a first generation move to the moon, their kids won't put up with a 1.2+ second ping in halo, and will move back to earth when they are 16.
So you see, it won't be sustainable.

while we're linking websites about it

[Trepidity]

It might be worth pointing to the mission site or project site at NASA.

Re:while we're linking websites about it

[Informative]

The PDFs for the press conference have pictures containing a white dot which are alledged to be the crater and the explosion.

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/392841main_SSC-data.pdf

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/360020main_LRO_LCROSS_presskit2.pdf

Is it just me

[clong83]

... or does this posting say almost nothing? "We blew up a crater on the moon, and boy our data is great. Check back with you guys later."

Is this just NASA-speak for "We haven't analyzed the data yet but we wanted to make some sort of comment anyways"?

Re:Is it just me

[Ethanol-fueled]

It's NASA speak for "*sigh*, what the fuck are we even doing?"

NASA TV showed the ride in

[ronsr]

There's a nice sequence of screen-grabs showing the journey into lunar oblivion plus summary of the post-impact press conference here.

It was strange not seeing any massive impact plume like expected, but seems they got spectroscopic data which is what really matters. You got the sense that all the journos were disappointed there wasn't a big KABOOM with all those questions asked about it in the press conference.

Re:A high energy impact with the moon's surface..

[skine]

I think when you mix math and science it's an applied orgasm.

No translation needed. But in other words...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

- We didn't miss the aim point.
  - None of the instruments malfunctioned.
  - We didn't lose the data on the way back.
  - We'll tell you what it means once we're done analyzing and checking it.

In still other words "The project passed THE major milestone and is on track with nothing broken."