NASA's LCROSS Moon Impact Mission Provides Great Data 91
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."
Is it just me (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this just NASA-speak for "We haven't analyzed the data yet but we wanted to make some sort of comment anyways"?
unfortunate overhyping (Score:1, Insightful)
It's unfortunate that NASA hyped this up as much as they did, asking the nation to host "backyard impact parties" and saying you'll see it in your mid sized backyard telescope and whatever.
This may have been a smashing success for the scientists, but each time they play up something that turns out to be a dud in the eyes of Joe Sixpack, they'll lose that much more public support. They're teetering on the brink as it is; people don't understand why they should be funding smashing things into the moon when their local roads are filled with potholes and they can't afford health care.
No translation needed. But in other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
- We didn't miss the aim point.
- None of the instruments malfunctioned.
- We didn't lose the data on the way back.
- We'll tell you what it means once we're done analyzing and checking it.
In still other words "The project passed THE major milestone and is on track with nothing broken."
We pi**ed all the money away (Score:2, Insightful)
While the science geek in me says cool!, the other side says, After 40 years, is this the BEST we can do?
After the Apollo program we pi**ed all the money away on Vietnam, a string of other wars, and "The Great Society" welfare programs. These were all run on the national credit card until the interest on the account is now sucking down more than the income tax provides.
The value was sucked out of the economy and disposed of by government until, despite what advancements WERE made since with what resources were left, we still can't afford the size of program we could in the 1960s.
Moon shots are expensive and we're broke.