Washington – NASA’s going for full impact Friday, firing a bomb-laden missile at the moon in a dramatic search for water.
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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is sending its Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) on a collision course with the lunar south pole of the moon. And you can watch it live at 7:30 a.m. ET, for free, at the Newseum.
Before we get all confused with the acronyms (and yes, DC is all about acronyms), here’s the gist: NASA’s looking for water ice on the moon. So they’re sending their satellite up there with a rocket, which will crash into the moon’s surface.
There will be loads of moon dust, especially when the LCROSS flies through the debris to collect and send data back to Earth before it too crashes onto the moon. Yeah, NASA is really trying to kick it up out there.
If you’ve got a 10-to-12-inch diameter telescope, you can even watch the action from home.
I think it’s disgusting. These “scientists” think they own all creation and can do what they want with it. I say leave the moon as we found it – as it always was.
maybe this to, will be a staged movie production, as the moon landing was. .
Just to be clear: there is no explosive on LCROSS, so it is not a bomb in the classic space (with no oxygen on the moon, a conventional bomb wouldn’t explode anyway).
The impact energy is entirely kinetic, caused by a 2000 kg mass, followed by a 700 kg secondary impactor. Both will be traveling at high speed.
Check the NASA website for more details.
They are wasting our money trying to look for life forms in outer space. A find of water may support life. They want to challenge creationism
This is one thing I really dont understand about America – spending billions of dollars a year on space programs, especially ones that are trying to find water on the moon, when for a couple of million, they could build so much good here on earth. For starters, a desalination plant. The Earth is made up of 75% water – salt water. A desalination plant (like Israel are building) will take sea water & make it drinkable. Voila! – no need to look for water on the moon!
Hashem will bomb these lunatic humans b4 they attempt to destroy his beautiful world, like the dor hafloga.
They’ll regret it.
What a royal waste of money! Think of how many millions children, who are literaly starving to death around the world, that you could feed for years off the mony that is being wasted on this project!! How come they are not concerned with “LUNAR WARMING”!!! We have got plenty off water here! in fact they are worried that the world will flood because the ice is melting at the north pole! In the 70s and 80s space discovery was cool and it made america look great. But now its 2009! They need to take that same missle/spacecraft and aim it toward Tehran!!!!
Why go to the moon come to my house ill show you water nice fresh water
I hope they don’t mess this up and desroy the whole moon, because then we’ll have a little problem doing kiddush hachodesh. Yeah I know we have a calendar, but only until the year 6000. Furthermore, how will we bench the levana?
This is more about science then finding additional water sources, especially in the short to medium term. As a previous poster pointed out, NASA’s budget is a rounding error in terms of the US budget and the payoff is the discovery and understanding of the the solar system, the universe and our own home planet and the beginnings of the fundamental scientific answers to who we are, where we come from and where we might be going.
The Hubble telescope is now looking back 100s of millions of light years, to the origins of the universe and we’re only beginning to understand the complexity, the violence and importantly for our survival, the predictability of astronomical events. At the same time, a range of robotic probes are providing data that will be studied for decades on the geology of neighboring planets.
Will this feed the millions of hungry who need food today, absolutely not and we should continue to spend the vast majority of our efforts and resources on improving this world. Does this exploration feed the human soul and contribute to the march of progress which enables us to live as we do today? Also, absolutely and our constant quest for discovery and knowledge is what distinguishes us as made in Hashem’s image.
why am i reminded of some sci fi movie set in the future where the moon is cracked in half and orbits in pieces?
Isn’t it funny? Between 1969 and 1974 they managed to supposedly send 7 trips to the moon, and from 1974 to 2009 they couldn’t even manage to send ONE mission to the moon BEFORE the economic collapse?? R. Avigdor Miller never believed they went to the moon, and neither do I.
who says thay ever landid on the moon the pic of the moon landing is fake the flag is waving and thers no wind on the moon soo its a nather made up story
#16 totally ignores the actual story of what happened. The expression around NASA is “No bucks, No Buck Rogers” – the funding was drastically cut as early as 1970 by the Nixon administration. There were several missions cancelled because of budget cuts, and because of the cuts, NASA had a massive loss of the skilled people who made the thing happen. Since Boeing and Rockwell weren’t getting orders for more Saturn rockets, instead getting orders for Space Shuttle parts, the tooling for the moon stuff was either repurposed or just went missing. NASA radically changed the configuration of the launch pads, removing the support structures needed for Saturn rockets and replacing them with shuttle-specific parts. This sort of stuff needs upkeep and people who know what they’re doing, and the budgets aren’t there for making this kind of huge effort. The other thing to remember is that Rockwell was in the home districts of both Nixon and Reagan, so they were going to get most of the spending for space technology. Since Rockwell had committed to the Space Shuttle instead of expendable booster rockets, the spending was naturally going to be in that direction. With all of the noise about reusable, recycling, etc. the Shuttle sounded better in the press.
Oh, and if you look at the Federal budget pie chart, you’ll see that space spending is 0.58% of government spending. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security alone add up to 40%+ of the US government budget. The State Department gets 16.5% of the budget. Welfare comes out to almost 12% of the budget. You can do the math if you wish, but those five categories all come up to over 2.1 trillion dollars for fiscal 2009 alone (the overall government budget was 3.1 trillion). Space spending is less than 20 billion. Welfare spending alone was 365 billion.
Thank you #13 and #15 . Nice posts.
Maybe NASA is looking for ways to sustain life on the moon considering the fact that we’ve made such a mess of things down here on the earth. Possibly in order to keep a permanent human presence there, possibly to explore the idea of colonization. The idea that we should do nothing in space until our earthly problems such as world hunger are solved is ludicrous and irrelevant.
24 is correct. if you were on the moon you woudl see colors. and photos woudl show colors.
These american are crazy they’re at war with everybody, why are they bombing the MOON?!
Sending a rocket into the moon is a ridiculous thing to do. I’m all about exploring space sensibly (in time), but not so much about blowing stuff up there. We already know there is water there! Are we trying to figure out how much? As long as we have an economy like we do, states like California failing, a poor distribution of wealth and resources globally and the need to fight a war on “terror”, we have no business shooting bombs at the moon. We need to clean up our own house first. We are not alone in this world and it wouldn’t surprise me if our extraterrestrials friends put the kibosh on this mission. It also wouldn’t surprise me if the “search” for water isn’t just a big cover up for something else that we are doing.
Obama wants to bomb the moon instead of Afghanistan because his advisors told him Osama might be there.
The flag on the moon is waving because an astronaut rotated the poll. And if the moon landings were fake why didn’t the Russians say anything? They were tracking the missions. If you think they are going to fake this go out and buy a 12″ Dobsonian (B&H Has them) and watch it for yourself.
BTW Nasa publishes pretty much all of the raw data from every mission. If you want it you can get the raw bits as the come down from Hubble etc. Its just delayed for 12 months. But you can go look at the archives for yourself.
Uhh…. ? Did NASA conduct an environmental IMPACT report ?
Afterall, “the lesser light” controls the tides upon planet Earth [Earetz]….
? Is this a joke?
this is dum!! thay can spend all that money on blowing a hole in the moon but thay cant put it back in to our economy to help the people that need it.