NASA to bomb the Moon

NASA - Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is on its way to the Moon to help pave the way for humans to "return" there. The $600 million plan outlined on Monday represents an early milestone in the strategy outlined by President Bush two years ago to send astronauts back to the Moon to prepare for the eventual human exploration of Mars. NASA plan is to impact the bottom of the shadowed crater with the satellite's spent upper-stage Centaur rocket, more than 5,000 pounds of dead weight careening in at 5,600 mph. LRO is two in one spacecraft. The two spacecrafts should reach the moon in four to five days — or by early next week. One will enter into an orbit around the moon for a mapping mission. The other will swing past the Moon and go into an elongated orbit around Earth that will put it on course to crash into a crater at the Moon's south pole in October. Impact (or dust cloud) should be visible from Earth. The plume of ejected material — more than 350 tons of soil and rock — should rise as high as six miles. NASA expects the dramatic Moon-impacting part of the mission to be "a smashing success." It's a quest to determine whether frozen water is buried in one of the permanently shadowed craters.

"The attack on the Moon is not a declaration of war or act of wanton vandalism. Space scientists want to see if any water ice or vapour is revealed in the cloud of debris." What a stupid idea! More garbage in space, this time on a Moon. Well, Americans are not the only ones, Japanese have also crashed on the Moon. Quoting: "Andrews had no budget for an expensive lander to seek water, and conditions in the eternally dark polar craters would kill rovers, with temperatures close to minus 300 F. Instead, Blue Ice and its partners at Northrop Grumman came up with a concept to bring the lunar floor out in the open.... Since engineering precision hardware would break the budget, the LCROSS team had to make existing components work together." Yeah! It is a time of freaking Global Crisis. This is one low-cost, lightning-fast mission with a blast! American style, baby!

LRO - Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

LCROSS - Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite