[meteorite-list] Crash Landing on the Moon (LCROSS)

From: E.P. Grondine <epgrondine_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Jul 28 23:24:21 2006
Message-ID: <20060729032416.98037.qmail_at_web36901.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hi all -

Not a bad idea; kind of looks like Chang'e 1:

http://www.friends-partners.org/pipermail/fpspace/2006-May/019800.html

I hope the Chinese outline their lunar observatory
plans at the ILEWG meeting in Beijing July 27-29. I
hope they'll broadly describe some type of CAPS
variant.

good hunting -
Ed

--- Ron Baalke <baalke_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/28jul_crashlanding.htm
>
> Crash Landing on the Moon
> NASA Science News
> July 28, 2006
>
> July 28, 2006: In 1959, a spaceship fell out of the
> lunar sky and hit
> the ground near the Sea of Serenity. The ship itself
> was shattered, but
> its mission was a success. Luna 2 from the Soviet
> Union had became the
> first manmade object to "land" on the Moon.
>
> This may seem hard to believe, but Luna 2 started a
> trend:
> Crash landing on the Moon, on purpose. Dozens of
> spaceships have done it.
>
> NASA's first kamikazes were the Rangers, built and
> launched in the early
> 1960s. Five times, these car-sized spaceships
> plunged into the Moon,
> cameras clicking all the way down. They captured the
> first detailed
> images of lunar craters, then rocks and soil, then
> oblivion. Data beamed
> back to Earth about the Moon's surface were crucial
> to the success of
> later Apollo missions.
>
> Even after NASA mastered soft landings, however, the
> crashing continued.
> In the late 1960s and early 70s, mission controllers
> routinely guided
> massive Saturn rocket boosters into the Moon to make
> the ground shake
> for Apollo seismometers. Crashing was much easier
> than orbiting, they
> discovered. The Moon's uneven gravity field tugs on
> satellites in
> strange ways, and without frequent course
> corrections, orbiters tend to
> veer into the ground. Thus the Moon became a
> convenient graveyard for
> old spaceships: All five of NASA's Lunar Orbiters
> (1966-1972), four
> Soviet Luna probes (1959-1965), two Apollo
> sub-satellites (1970-1971),
> Japan's Hiten spacecraft (1993) and NASA's Lunar
> Prospector (1999) ended
> up in craters of their own making.
>
> Back to the Future
>
> All this experience is about to come in handy. NASA
> researchers have a
> daring plan to find water on the Moon and they're
> going to do it by--you
> guessed it--crash landing. The mission's name is
> LCROSS, short for Lunar
> CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite. Team
> leader Tony Colaprete of
> NASA Ames explains how it's going to work:
>
> "We think there's frozen water hiding inside some of
> the Moon's
> permanently-shadowed craters. So we're going to hit
> one of those
> craters, kick up some debris, and analyze the impact
> plumes for signs of
> water."
>
> The experiment couldn't be more important. NASA is
> returning to the
> Moon, and when explorers get there, they'll need
> water. Water can be
> split into hydrogen for rocket fuel and oxygen for
> breathing. It can be
> mixed with moondust to make concrete, a building
> material. Water makes
> an excellent radiation shield, and when you get
> thirsty you can drink
> it. One option is to ship water directly from Earth,
> but that's
> expensive. A better idea would be to mine water
> directly from the lunar
> soil.
>
> But is it there? That's what LCROSS aims to find
> out.
>
> The quest begins in late 2008 when LCROSS leaves
> Earth tucked inside the
> same rocket as Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a
> larger spacecraft
> on a scouting mission of its own. After launch, the
> two ships will split
> up and head for the Moon, LRO to orbit, LCROSS to
> crash.
>
> Actually, says Colaprete, "we're going to crash
> twice." LCROSS is a
> double spacecraft: a small, smart mothership and a
> big, not-so-smart
> rocket booster. The mothership is called the
> "Shepherding Spacecraft"
> because it shepherds the booster to the Moon.
> They'll travel to the Moon
> together, but hit separately.
>
> The booster strikes first, a savage blow
> transforming 2-tons of mass and
> 10 billion joules of kinetic energy into a blinding
> flash of heat and
> light. Researchers expect the impact to gouge a
> crater ~20 meters wide
> and throw up a plume of debris as high as 40 km.
>
> Close behind, the Shepherding Spacecraft will
> photograph the impact and
> then fly right through the debris plume. Onboard
> spectrometers can
> analyze the sunlit plume for signs of water (H2O),
> water fragments (OH),
> salts, clays, hydrated minerals and assorted organic
> molecules. "If
> there's water there, or anything else interesting,
> we'll find it," says
> Colaprete.
>
> The Shepherd then begins its own death plunge. Like
> the old Rangers, it
> will dive toward the lunar surface, cameras
> clicking. Back on Earth,
> mission controllers will see the booster's glowing
> crater swell to fill
> the field of view--an exhilarating rush.
>
> Until the very end, the Shepherd's spectrometers
> will keep sniffing for
> water. "We'll be able to monitor the data stream
> down to 10 seconds
> before impact," says Colaprete. "And we should have
> enough control to
> land within 100 meters of the booster's crash site."
>
> The Shepherd is 1/3rd lighter than the booster, so
> its
> impact will be proportionally smaller. Nevertheless,
> the Shepherd will
> make its own crater and plume, adding to those of
> the booster.
> Astronomers hope the combined plumes will be visible
> from Earth,
> allowing observations to continue even after the
> Shepherd is destroyed.
>
> Many readers will remember the crash of Lunar
> Prospector in 1999.
> Mission controllers guided the ship into Shoemaker
> crater near the
> Moon's south pole in hopes of kicking up water -
> just like LCROSS. But no
> water was found.
>
> "LCROSS has a better chance of success," says
> Colaprete. For one thing,
> LCROSS delivers more than 200 times the impact
> energy of Lunar
> Prospector, excavating a deeper crater and throwing
> debris higher where
> it can be plainly seen. While Lunar Prospector's
> plume was observed only
> by telescopes on Earth a quarter-million miles away,
> LCROSS's plume will
> be analyzed by the Shepherding Spacecraft at point
> blank range, using
> instruments specifically designed for the purpose.
>
> Only one question remains: Where will LCROSS strike?
>
> "We haven't decided," he says. The best places are
> probably polar
> craters with shadowy bottoms where water deposited
> by comets long ago
> may have frozen and survived to the present-day.
> Less orthodox choices
> include canyons, rilles and lava tubes. "There are
> many candidates.
> We're convening a meeting of researchers to debate
> the merits of various
> sites and, finally, to pick one."
>
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Received on Fri 28 Jul 2006 11:24:16 PM PDT