Front Row Seats To NASA's Lunar Impact 132
itwbennett writes "Tomorrow morning at 7:30 EDT, NASA is going to crash a probe into the moon as part of its LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite) mission, the main purpose of which is to discover if there's any water on the moon. 'If you happen to have a 10-12" telescope (or larger) then you might be able to see the plume from your backyard,' says blogger Peter Smith. 'For the rest of us, the impact will be streamed live over the web in a few places. NASA will have a feed, beginning at 6:15 EDT. The NASA feed includes live footage from the spacecraft itself as well as expert commentary and other goodies. Astronomy service SLOOH is offering a double-shot of earth-bound feeds, with one feed from New Hampshire and the other from Arizona. The SLOOH feeds start at 6:30 am EDT.'" Update: Matt_dk adds a link to a viewing guide to the impact, writing that "Amateur astronomers need a 10-inch or bigger telescope to make observations."
Re:Robots (Score:3, Insightful)
The main problem is probably powering a robot on the moon without solar power.
Re:LCROSS Observation page (Score:2, Insightful)
There's also a separate NASA mission site with some easier to understand info.
http://www.nasa.gov/lcross [nasa.gov]
Re:If the water is that difficult to get to... (Score:3, Insightful)
It raises the question of why we're spending any time at all on the moon. It can't be lived on, it's unlikely to harbor life, its geology has already been explored. Someone tell me what the point is...
Its surface geology has been explored, but not what's beneath. As for why to explore it, it's the closest heavenly body to the earth, so it's a good place to start. It's cheap and easy to get to, and a good stepping stone to future missions. Do you think the Viking or Mariner missions would have been successful if not for the Surveyor moon missions? If we ignore moon science, we make all future space missions more difficult and expensive.
If you don't think astronomy isn't important, then you must hate science. If you think the moon isn't important, you're just not thinking practically.
Of course, the reason for using a satellite impact is because it's cheaper and easier to determine if there is any water at all (which scientists aren't sure of). If there isn't, we saved ourselves a bunch of money by not sending up an expensive excavator robot. If there is, then we can determine how best to determine the geological significance, and what that means for the history of our solar system and potential future moon missions.