- Credits
- 54,437
In the predawn hours Friday, while those on the West Coast still snooze, a rocket is scheduled to punch a 13-foot-deep hole in a crater at the moon's south pole that hasn't seen sunlight in billions of years. The purpose: to find out whether ice lies hidden there.
NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, which set out for the moon in June, made a late-course correction Tuesday to better position itself to steer the rocket into the 2-mile-deep crater Cabeus at 4:30 a.m. PDT on Friday.
Four minutes later, if all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will fly through the cloud of debris that will rise above the lunar surface and linger there briefly. As it passes through the cloud, the satellite's nine instruments will analyze the dust and debris for evidence of water, before crashing itself.
Back on Earth, amateur astronomers from Colorado to Silicon Valley are expected to turn their telescopes to the celestial show, even though it will last less than a minute.
Scientists preparing for the collision could hardly contain their excitement over what might turn up in that short time.
"The spacecraft is looking great. I don't think we could miss the moon now if we tried," said Steve Hixson, vice president of Advanced Concepts at Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, which built the craft.
"It's our job to confirm there is water there," said Dan Andrews, the project manager at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., which designed the spacecraft instruments. "But even if it's very dry, that's a good answer to have."
more here
NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, which set out for the moon in June, made a late-course correction Tuesday to better position itself to steer the rocket into the 2-mile-deep crater Cabeus at 4:30 a.m. PDT on Friday.
Four minutes later, if all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will fly through the cloud of debris that will rise above the lunar surface and linger there briefly. As it passes through the cloud, the satellite's nine instruments will analyze the dust and debris for evidence of water, before crashing itself.
Back on Earth, amateur astronomers from Colorado to Silicon Valley are expected to turn their telescopes to the celestial show, even though it will last less than a minute.
Scientists preparing for the collision could hardly contain their excitement over what might turn up in that short time.
"The spacecraft is looking great. I don't think we could miss the moon now if we tried," said Steve Hixson, vice president of Advanced Concepts at Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, which built the craft.
"It's our job to confirm there is water there," said Dan Andrews, the project manager at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., which designed the spacecraft instruments. "But even if it's very dry, that's a good answer to have."
more here
