NASA Spacecraft Will Crash into the Moon This Month
The far side of the moon will get a special new crater later this month when a NASA spacecraft makes a high-speed crash into the lunar surface.
NASA's moon-orbiting LADEE probe (short for Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer) is expected to impact Earth's natural satellite sometime on or before April 21. The LADEE spacecraft has been studying the moon's thin atmosphere — called an exosphere — and the lunar dust environment since it began orbiting the moon in October.
"If you hit anything at 1,600 meters (5,250 feet) per second, that's not a landing you walk away from, so it's by no means gentle," Rick Elphic, LADEE project scientist, told reporters during a news conference today (April 3). "This is a very, very high-speed impact, and even though there's a possibility of tumbling across the surface, there's nothing gentle about it. You [LADEE] will be destroyed." [See Photos of NASA's LADEE Mission]
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (another probe circling the moon) could look for LADEE's crash site after impact, said Butler Hine, LADEE project manager.
Before the $280 million LADEE mission meets its ultimate fate, the vending-machine-size probe still has some scientific work to do. Although the probe's primary mission — to explore the moon's thin atmosphere and dust environment — is complete, scientists still want to see what the spacecraft can uncover about lunar dust from only a few kilometers above the moon's surface.
"The moon's gravity field is so lumpy, and the terrain is so highly variable, with crater ridges and valleys, that frequent maneuvers are required, or the LADEE spacecraft will impact the moon's surface," Hine said in a statement. "Even if we perform all maneuvers perfectly, there's still a chance LADEE could impact the moon sometime before April 21, which is when we expect LADEE's orbit to naturally decay after using all the fuel onboard."
One of LADEE's missions was to help solve a moon-dust mystery dating back to the Apollo program. Apollo astronauts saw a glow on the horizon of the moon before sunrise.
Scientists think the glimmer could have been caused by lunar dust lofted into the exosphere, but for its part, LADEE hasn't recorded dust concentrations from its orbit that would create that horizon glow, Elphic said. The probe will get a chance to explore it further before crashing into the lunar surface when it uses its orientation cameras to try to see what the Apollo astronauts saw.
http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-spacecraft-crash-moon-month-143825667.html
John said the moon had an atmosphere of sorts. I guess this will help us find out. That glow has to come from somewhere.
NASA's Spacecraft LADEE Crashes into the Dark Side of Moon
NASA - or to give the organisation its full title, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the United States - has deliberately crashed its £166m lunar explorer into the dark side of the moon - at a speed of approximately 3,600mph. The reason? Due to a lack of fuel it would have been impossible to bring the spacecraft home to earth.
NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) was guided into a low orbit by technicians having completed a six-month orbit of the moon in which it analysed the moon's dusty atmosphere. The craft started orbiting the moon on 6 October and started gathering data on 10 November. It transmitted invaluable information about the moon back to NASA's Ames Research Centre in Moffett Field, California.
Travelling at three times the speed of a flying bullet and being the size of a vending machine, LADEE's impact would have been spectacular if anyone had been around to see it, explains project scientist Rick Elphic:
"There's nothing gentle about impact at these speeds – it's just a question of whether LADEE made a localized craterlet on a hillside or scattered debris across a flat area. It will be interesting to see what kind of feature LADEE has created."
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/nasas-spacecraft-ladee-crashes-dark-side-moon-160433186.html#16JzBuT