NASA's LCROSS Moon Impact Mission Provides Great Data

Several sources are sending us reports of NASA's recent LCROSS Moon impact mission. While the visual results seem to be less than stunning, LCROSS Principal Investigator Anthony Colaprete said the initial results produced "the data we need," but refused to say anything about "water or no water." "The goal of this dual impact was to have the Centaur upper stage impact first, allowing the LCROSS spacecraft to observe close-up the results of the impact. In fairness, the view from LCROSS as it approached the moon was amazing — even though there was no obvious visual evidence of impact, which early data from the infrared camera on the craft indicates did occur. What happens next is a whole lot of math and science. The LCROSS spacecraft included nine individual science instruments. This suite of instruments consisted of one visible camera, two near-infrared cameras, two mid-infrared cameras, a visible light spectrometer, two near-infrared spectrometers, and a photometer. All nine of those instruments were gathering data simultaneously and streaming that data back to Earth."

while we're linking websites about it

[Trepidity]

It might be worth pointing to the mission site [nasa.gov] or project site [nasa.gov] at NASA.

NASA TV showed the ride in

[ronsr]

There's a nice sequence of screen-grabs showing the journey into lunar oblivion plus summary of the post-impact press conference here. [ninkinews.com]

It was strange not seeing any massive impact plume like expected, but seems they got spectroscopic data which is what really matters. You got the sense that all the journos were disappointed there wasn't a big KABOOM with all those questions asked about it in the press conference.

Re:while we're linking websites about it

[Informative]

The PDFs for the press conference have pictures containing a white dot which are alledged to be the crater and the explosion.

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/392841main_SSC-data.pdf

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/360020main_LRO_LCROSS_presskit2.pdf

Re:We will never colonize the moon

[idontgno]

Signal propagation in conductors is only a fraction of lightspeed.

This site [siemon.com], a cabling vendor, has a nice graph [siemon.com] towards the middle of the page. Reading that graph tells me that the propagation delay of their twisted pair is 470 ns over a 100 m run.

Google calc tells me [google.com] that that works out to 212,765,957 meters per second. Scorching, eh? But compared to lightspeed?

Again, let's ask Google calc [google.com]

Oh, that's only 71% of the speed of light. OK, so, that's a bit slower. Based on simple RTT and the signal propagation speed difference, your 2.4 sec ping just went up to just over 4 seconds.

Yeah, ok, you were joking. And carbon nanotubule conductors may have a signal propagation speed higher than even virgin-copper oxygen-free 2-gauge Monster(tm) brand network cable. Or not. But even a superconductor, insulated with either vacuum or a dielectric insulator, has a signal propagation speed measured as a fraction of the speed of light. (I've heard .95c cited.)

Superconductors are used, in fact, as delay lines [google.com].

Re:unfortunate overhyping

[confused one]

I think they honestly expected a bigger flash. Something that could be seen by a 10" or 12" telescope. Instead, the smallest telescope I heard say "we saw the impact" was MMT, which has a 256" aperature.