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NASA Plans to Smash Spacecraft into the Moon

Posted by samzenpus on Thu Feb 28, 2008 05:15 AM
from the hit-it-hard dept.
Moon Space NASA Science
djasbestos writes "NASA is planning to smash a spacecraft into the Moon in order to look for hydrogen deposits in the poles. More notably, it will impact with significantly greater force (100x, per the article) than previous Moon collisions, such as by the Lunar Prospector and Smart-1 probes. Admiral Ackbar was unreachable for comment as to the exact location and size of the Moon's thermal exhaust port."
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Firehose:NASA plans to smash spacecraft into the moon by djasbestos (1035410)
[+] How NASA Will Bomb the Moon To Find Water 280 comments
mattnyc99 writes "A few weeks ago we got first word of NASA's plan to crash a spacecraft into the moon next February. The new issue of Popular Mechanics has an in-depth look at the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and its low-cost, lightning-fast mission prep — even if delays have pushed it to late February or early March. 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.'"
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NASA Plans to Smash Spacecraft into the Moon 25 Comments More /

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  • Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:17AM (#22585776)
    Many Bothans died to bring samzenpus this information...

  • That's no moon... (Score:4, Funny)

    by rhomboid (218475) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:21AM (#22585796) Journal
    It's a space station...

  • Practising... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PinkyDead (862370) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:23AM (#22585816) Journal
    ...for another Mars mission, eh?

    It had to be said - even if it is terribly trolly.

  • Wrong guy surely (Score:5, Funny)

    by 91degrees (207121) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:32AM (#22585864) Journal
    Admiral Ackbar led the attack on the second Battle Station. The thermal exhaust port weakness was on the first.

    • Re:Wrong guy surely (Score:5, Funny)

      by CrazyJim1 (809850) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:46AM (#22585964) Journal
      Heh, I'd bet all my mod points that you get modded up for this.
      A: You corrected someone's error
      B: It was Star Wars related
      C: You made fun of someone who thought he was funny, but many people don't.
      D: You dead panned it.

    • Re:Wrong guy surely (Score:5, Informative)

      by QuantumG (50515) <qg@biodome.org> on Thursday February 28 2008, @07:03AM (#22586354) Homepage Journal
      Actually the weakness was on both, that's why they went after the second one.. and it was a trap. In fact, the weakness was on all the big craft of the era. Star Destroyers were just as vulnerable to "Trench Run Syndrome" as the Death Stars. Snub starfighters were so successful at taking out large ships using TRS that the Imperial tactic of leaving small ships to planetary defenses had to be changed, thus creating the Lancer-class ships. Kuat Drive Yards designed and developed the first Lancer-class frigate with twenty quad-laser cannon batteries designed specifically for starfighter hunting. Ironically, the Imperial Starfleet found the Lancer-class too expensive for full fleet deployment. A few frigates made it into various fleets, but most admirals preferred to use, and subsequently lose, their TIE starfighters as anti-starfighter options. As a result, most Lancer-class frigates, like smaller ships before them, were assigned to rear guard operations and planetary defense after all.

    • Re:Wrong guy surely (Score:5, Funny)

      by ozbird (127571) on Thursday February 28 2008, @09:49AM (#22587302)
      Admiral Ackbar led the attack on the second Battle Station.

      Allah'u to his friends.

      The thermal exhaust port weakness was on the first.

      If someone shot a proton torpedo up your exhaust port, you'd have a moment of weakness too.

  • How long... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lifyre (960576) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:37AM (#22585906)
    before someone tries to blame high tide, beached whales, and global warming on us crashing shit into the moon?

  • I didn't know planned failure was okay... (Score:5, Funny)

    by philspear (1142299) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:39AM (#22585924)
    I am planning on failing my midterms. I expect to fail this midterm by significantly more points (100x per my plans) than previous failures. I am doing this in search of hydrogen deposits in the poles.

  • Has to be done (Score:5, Funny)

    by FoolsGold (1139759) on Thursday February 28 2008, @05:50AM (#22585980)
    This is Slashdot, so I better get a good old tradition out of the way before someone else does I suppose...

    NASA officials has released a press statement saying the spacecraft will not require any special programming to direct it towards a collision with the Moon. They simply plan to install Windows Vista on the craft and let nature take its course.

    • Re:Has to be done (Score:5, Funny)

      by hairyfeet (841228) <bassbeast1968@gm ... m minus math_god> on Thursday February 28 2008, @07:52AM (#22586564)
      Your information is out of date. In simulations Vista slowed the machine down so badly by the time it got up enough speed to crash the moon was out of alignment. In light of these simulations (and do to budget constraints) they have decided to go with plan b-which will consist of a robotic arm plugging a usb scanner into the underlying Windows 98 operating system at the appropriate time. This will result in further savings in hardware and fuel by lowering the system requirements from "need a second mortgage elite" to "cousin cleetus wally world special".


      For further information please see the paper entitled "Using complex instability for positive gain: The use of underlying instabilities inherent in proprietary operating systems with undocumented functions to achieve net gains in proposed Unmanned Procedurally Programmed Missions for Interstellar Scientific Study (UPPMISS) " at NASA.gov

  • Unfortunately (Score:5, Funny)

    by TummyX (84871) on Thursday February 28 2008, @06:06AM (#22586076)
    Unfortunately, due to a failure to perform a metric/imperial conversion, the mission failed when the probe performed a perfect soft landing on the moon's surface.

      • Re:Unfortunately (Score:5, Funny)

        by Thanshin (1188877) on Thursday February 28 2008, @07:36AM (#22586474)
        Even more embarrassing would be to fail so miserably that the probe landed on the sea and they spent a year reporting having found water and living organisms on the moon.
  • may I suggest that NASA replace their somewhat embarrassing "Faster, better, cheaper" motto with "Closer, cheaper, deeper"?

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Thanshin (1188877) on Thursday February 28 2008, @06:26AM (#22586176)

    NASA Plans to Smash Spacecraft into the Moon
    Following NASA's new trend of sincerity, Burger King releases a new set of products under the name "Die fat bastard! Die" and NIKE presents the new AirSlave collection.

    • Re:Smash a probe, been there, done that! (Score:5, Informative)

      by mr100percent (57156) on Thursday February 28 2008, @06:46AM (#22586274) Homepage Journal
      You may laugh, but NASA did do it before. During the final Apollo missions, they allowed the (abandoned) lunar module to crash into the moon in order to test seismic readings on the instruments left behind.

      • Re:Smash a probe, been there, done that! (Score:5, Informative)

        by mbone (558574) on Thursday February 28 2008, @08:06AM (#22586620)
        They also smashed the third stage of the Saturn V into the Moon for every Apollo after 13 IIRC, also as seismic probes. That had
        considerably more kinetic energy than either the LEM upper stages or any of the recent impacts.

        It wasn't just to test the seismometers, it was to map the interior of the Moon, once they found out that the Moon is seismically pretty quiet and doesn't have much in the way of Moonquakes. It was thus a very large scale example of the seismic prospecting that is done frequently in oil exploration.

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