NASA Plans to Smash Spacecraft into the Moon

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."

Re:Wrong guy surely

[dzfoo]

You are right. We should try contacting General Antilles, who's in charge of the small rebellion planning an attack run on the battle station. I heard he just received some secret plans to it.

          -dZ.

Re:Smash a probe, been there, done that!

[mr100percent]

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:Wrong guy surely

[QuantumG]

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:Smash a probe, been there, done that!

[mbone]

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.

Re:Smash a probe, been there, done that!

[joeljkp]

It's actually a relatively common thing to do.

A short list of missions intended to impact the Moon:

1. Luna 2 [wikipedia.org]
2. Ranger 3 [wikipedia.org]
3. Ranger 4 [wikipedia.org]
4. Ranger 5 [wikipedia.org]
5. Ranger 6 [wikipedia.org]
6. Ranger 7 [wikipedia.org]
7. Ranger 8 [wikipedia.org]
8. Ranger 9 [wikipedia.org]

A short list of missions with other goals, but were eventually intentionally impacted with the Moon:

1. every lunar orbiter ever