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Science

NASA Crashing Probe to Look for H2O on Moon 149

Posted by Hemos from the smash-crash-bushwhacked dept.
Echoloc8 writes "This article from Yahoo! News reports that NASA will be smashing the Lunar Prospector probe into the moon near the probable ice deposit discovered recently, trying to send a water-vapor plume high enough to be detected. They claim a 10% chance of success." It's a pretty cool idea-the probe has just about served all of it's usefulness, and while not finding liquid doesn't mean that it is not present, I like the notion of using every last dollar they can.
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NASA Crashing Probe to Look for H2O on Moon More

NASA Crashing Probe to Look for H2O on Moon

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  • Reminds me of the old days of video games. After I got bored with the old Lunar Lander video game, I would see how big of a crater I could make with the lander.

    Glad to see that things have not changed that much.

  • NASA Mission Planning Minutes (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Minutes of NASA Lunar Prospector briefing No.2045

    1st Nasa Scientist: Hmmm, you know, if there were some kind of meteorite impact in that region it might liberate some of the trapped water which we could detect.

    2nd NASA Scientist: But we can't predict when a strike might happen -we could wait millions of years for such an event.

    3rd NASA Scientist: Well, suppose we fire some kind of missile into the moon? That would do it, and we would know exactly where and when the impact would happen.

    2nd NASA Scientist: Right! Say, we could even use the old probe that up there now.

    1st Nasa Scientist: You mean, crash Lunar Prospector into the surface of the moon with an impact equivalent to a 1100mph car crash?

    2nd NASA Scientist: Exactly...

    Together: KEEWWWLLL!!!
  • I mean, really, some of the posters have displayed such ignorance of things nerdly they should have their slashdot logins revoked. Must be the "computers are kewl, starwars is kewl" kiddies.

    Some examples:

    "Willy K." apparently posting from MIT (MIT? then that message must be a troll. Even the janitor would know better.):
    Does it seem odd to anyone else that the first thing we decide to land permanently on the moon is a wrecked satellite?

    Uh, hello? The US and USSR have been "landing" wrecked (and intact, but now inactive) satellites and spacecraft on the Moon for nearly 40 years now, this is hardly "first". In fact, Pete Conrad and Al Bean on Apollo 12 even brought back some pieces of one of them (Surveyor 3), to see how they'd held up to a few years of lunar exposure. There are literally tons of "space junk" on the lunar surface.

    "philreed" mentions in response to somebody commenting that the orbit will decay that:
    Uh, orbits degrade because of atmospheric drag. No atmosphere on the moon.
    He's half right, there's no detectable atmosphere. However orbits also degrade because of perturbing forces such as the gravity of Earth and Sun, solar light pressure, and the irregular gravitational field of the Moon (mascons). Nothing stays in lunar orbit forever.

    "Gumpu" worries that:
    The problem is that space vehicles usually use nuclear fuel for their power generation. With this they will contamenate that place on the moon for future generations..
    First, space vehicles only use nuclear fuel if they need a particularly dense power source (as some old Soviet radar sats), will be operating far from the Sun (as with trans-Mars spacecraft) or will need to operate during extended dark periods (as the Apollo scientific experiment packages that had to survive the lunar night). Since Prospector was doing gamma-ray spectrometry, the last thing they'd want is a nuclear power source aboard.
    Second, the lunar surface is daily bathed with radiation both from the Sun and deep space (cosmic rays), it having no shielding atmosphere.
    A little extra from a few spoonfuls of isotope in (usually) an RTG is hardly anything to worry about.

    "nlucent" also seems concerned about keeping the Moon and Mars green (which they aren't, but facts aren't important if we're arguing feelings), and concludes:
    and then we say, Hey, lets crash something into mars
    Apparently ignorant of the fact that we've been doing that since the 1960s too, and as recently as a few years ago (remember Mars Rover? That at least was within your lifetime.)

    There were a few others.

    Fortunately the more intelligent slashdotters eventually showed up to correct some of the above misconceptions, but the mind still boggles...

  • Protests from a Native American Group? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You're right; I found this on the web ...


    In January 1998 NASA apologized to American Indians for including an ounce of ashes from the
    cremated body of space scientist Eugene Shoemaker on the unmanned Lunar Prospector which will
    ultimately crash onto the moon's surface. Navajo Nation President Albert Hale protested, "The moon is a
    sacred place in the religious beliefs of many Native Americans. It is a gross insensitivity to the beliefs of
    many Native Americans to place human remains on the moon." NASA promised to never again place
    human remains on the moon without first engaging in a wide consultation.

  • Footnote on lunar orbits (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Apollos 15 and 16 put small satellites in lunar orbit. The satellite deployed on 15 stayed in orbit for several years, but the one deployed on 16 crashed into the lunar surface after only 34 days in orbit.

    The Moon's gravity field is so irregular that vehicles in low lunar orbit can experience altitude transients on the order of tens of kilometers. Going to higher orbits helps some, but the effect of the Earth's gravity to increase the eccentricity without altering the semi-major axis. As a result, the altitude of the pericynthion drops. Either way, the orbital altitude will eventually dip below the surface.

    Predicting orbital lifetimes for lunar satellites is a challenge because there are still a lot of uncertainties in lunar gravitational models. Given that the Lunar Prospector was placed into a polar orbit, I would guess that its lifetime could be fairly long.

    Not all /. readers are teen-age wanna-be's...
  • I mean, really, some of the posters have displayed such ignorance of things nerdly they should have their slashdot logins revoked. Must be the "computers are kewl, starwars is kewl" kiddies.

    Some examples:

    "Willy K." apparently posting from MIT (MIT? then that message must be a troll. Even the janitor would know better.):
    Does it seem odd to anyone else that the first thing we decide to land permanently on the moon is a wrecked satellite?

    Uh, hello? The US and USSR have been "landing" wrecked (and intact, but now inactive) satellites and spacecraft on the Moon for nearly 40 years now, this is hardly "first". In fact, Pete Conrad and Al Bean on Apollo 12 even brought back some pieces of one of them (Surveyor 3), to see how they'd held up to a few years of lunar exposure. There are literally tons of "space junk" on the lunar surface.

    "philreed" mentions in response to somebody commenting that the orbit will decay that:
    Uh, orbits degrade because of atmospheric drag. No atmosphere on the moon.
    He's half right, there's no detectable atmosphere. However orbits also degrade because of perturbing forces such as the gravity of Earth and Sun, solar light pressure, and the irregular gravitational field of the Moon (mascons). Nothing stays in lunar orbit forever.

    "Gumpu" worries that:
    The problem is that space vehicles usually use nuclear fuel for their power generation. With this they will contamenate that place on the moon for future generations..
    First, space vehicles only use nuclear fuel if they need a particularly dense power source (as some old Soviet radar sats), will be operating far from the Sun (as with trans-Mars spacecraft) or will need to operate during extended dark periods (as the Apollo scientific experiment packages that had to survive the lunar night). Since Prospector was doing gamma-ray spectrometry, the last thing they'd want is a nuclear power source aboard.
    Second, the lunar surface is daily bathed with radiation both from the Sun and deep space (cosmic rays), it having no shielding atmosphere.
    A little extra from a few spoonfuls of isotope in (usually) an RTG is hardly anything to worry about.

    "nlucent" also seems concerned about keeping the Moon and Mars green (which they aren't, but facts aren't important if we're arguing feelings), and concludes:
    and then we say, Hey, lets crash something into mars
    Apparently ignorant of the fact that we've been doing that since the 1960s too, and as recently as a few years ago (remember Mars Rover? That at least was within your lifetime.)

    There were a few others.

    Fortunately the more intelligent slashdotters eventually showed up to correct some of the above misconceptions, but the mind still boggles...
  • Uh, orbits degrade because of atmospheric drag. No atmosphere on the moon.

    Orbits also degrade due to the mascons on the moon. It's impossible to get a truly stable lunar orbit. Every object in lunar orbit will either be ejected into earth or solar orbit, or will crash on the moon. Usually the latter.

    This is a choice between waiting for an unpowered and useless craft to crash pointlessly on the moon, or for the craft to go out in a blaze of glory, with a 10% chance of getting reasonably important science at the end.

    Which choice is better is left as an exercise for the reader.

  • and it's "LLM" not "LM" (LLM stands for Lunar Landing Module)

    No, it's not. It's LM (Lunar Module), formerly known as LEM (Lunar Excursion Module). I don't think that LLM was ever used as a name for the LM, at least officially.

    Check out Chariots for Apollo [nasa.gov] by NASA history, and S/Cat Remembered [specdata.com], a site by one of the guys who worked on building the thing.

  • *Minor nit to minor spoiler*

    *Sniff* brings a tear to my eye remembering the scene where the project manager just stands there looking at the first one, realizing after all those years it wasn't coming back.

    That scene, if we're talking about the same one, was LM 5. (The first one to land on the moon.)

    Apollo 9's LM burned up in the earth's atmosphere during (IIRC) the early 80s. 10's LM is in solar orbit, daring someone to find it. (Good luck.) The rest impacted on the moon, although 11 and 12 lost power before it happened, so NORAD's official catalog sentimentally lists them as still up in lunar orbit.

    From the Earth to the Moon is a great series, and I highly recommend it to everyone here. It's like they extended Apollo 13 to cover the entire campaign. (Indeed, many of the sets and props were reused.)

  • Just because we can mess up other planets/moons doesnt necessarily mean we should. Granted one satellite isnt going to affect anything (assuming it doesnt hit a martian king or something =), But we have already f'd up this planet enough as it is, do we really want to start screwing up possible future habitats before we even move in? Say we crash this satellite, then we say, Hey we already crashed one, a little more trash wont hurt anything right? But it does. The first time you do something is the hardest, every time after is cake. So we eventually make the moon a big galactic landfill, and then we say, Hey, lets crash something into mars. you get the point. This is all *very unlikely*, but it is very possible if we arent careful.
  • I know this may be hard to believe, but I do think he was joking...

    -------

    "Plus, tag-team robot wrestling! It's the mighty robots of
  • Oh, get off it. What are we going to hurt on the fsck'ing moon? The thing's a big barren rock. The worst thing that can happen is that Nike will land a construction crew and carve a "swoosh" into the thing.

    Besides, we need to get off this Muddball just in case Mother Nature decides to pull something. Personally, I'd prefer another star system (just in case there's a reason we're not detecting as many neutrinos as we should be from our middle-aged sun), but baby steps are a start.

    ----

  • Heh, we've smashed a whole lot of junk into the moon before now; this is little stuff.

    Besides, this is maybe 300 lbs of metal and plastic -- you or I put out more trash than that in six months. It was going to eventually crash into the moon anyhow (what goes up...), so we might as well do it in a way that'll eventually help us build a base up there.

    ----

  • Not a bad idea (Score:4)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Wednesday June 02, 1999 @08:09PM (#1869169) Homepage
    It's good to know that NASA still has some people who are thinking outside the box.

    These recent "faster, cheaper, better" probes are really a big contrast to the older "big waste" programs like the Space Station (motto: Now $20 billion over budget). The Lunar Prospector, the Mars Rover, DS1... These are some really exciting programs. This is just a really good illustration of the whole "think better" paradigm in action.

    ----

  • The problem is that mankind is the best on this world in doing that so they are known as the most evil race on the planet

    How can 'following it's own instinct' be considered 'evil'? Doesn't evil require intent? Is it evil for the lion to kill the gazelle?


    ...phil
  • But what isn't unlikely is that the orbit will eventually degrade and the satellite will 'land' somewhere on the moon.

    Uh, orbits degrade because of atmospheric drag. No atmosphere on the moon.


    ...phil
  • Posted by Matt Bartley:

    but what about all the cosmic debris that hits the moon every day? It's all pock marked with craters because there isn't any atmosphere to burn up or slow down all the rocks that crash in to it.
    Those craters have formed over a time period of upwards of 4 billion years, which means there was typically a long time between impacts. IIRC, there is only one reported probable sighting of a meteorite impact on the moon, and that was several hundred years ago.

    Micrometeorites (impacts of dust particles) may be a low level, but frequent danger. I don't know how bad.

  • Posted by kenmcneil:

    I want to respond in general to all the people who are transferring the "save the planet" ideas over to the moon. If we eventually settle on the moon and make a big mess what would be the loss? On the earth there is something special (i.e. life) but on the moon there is nothing! We are way off in the bonnies in the universe and I don't think where going to get a ticket if we throw a few bottles out the window. Get real people!
  • >The problem is that mankind is the best on this world in doing that so they are known as the most evil race on the planet (until they finally destroy themselves).

    "They"? Are you not a member of mankind then?
  • >Uh, orbits degrade because of atmospheric drag. No atmosphere on the moon.

    There are multiple reasons that an object's orbital trajectory might change, including changing in such a fashion that it strikes the orbited object.

    The most prevalent in this case is the presence of other significant gravitational fields, namely those of the Earth and the Sun. Just as the moon's presence makes the Earth's trajectory around the sun "wobble" (basically the center of mass of the earth/moon system has a smooth orbital path), an object orbiting the moon would have its trajectory perturbed as it neared the Earth or the Sun. Each subsequent orbit approach would be different due to the previous perturbation. Because the Earth's influence is so significant, this means that lunar orbits tend to be highly irregular, and preturbations that result in orbiting objects leaving orbit of the moon or crashing into the moon are quite common.

    Orbiting objects may also collide with other objects, and such collisions will have some effect on the orbital pattern. An atmosphere means that such collisions are much more likely and uniform in their effect on the orbiting object.

  • I have had the opprotunity to work with NASA engineers. I am not too easily intimidated intellectualy. These guys intimidated me with there intellegence.

    Ah!....uhh...no, I can't...(but four!)...Oh, OK, just forget it :-)

    dylan_-


    --

  • Remember that's forty pounds of ice turned into water vapor. It will be HOT compared to the surroundings. Try putting a balloon on a bottle(glass please) and boiling it until the balloon is full. Then measure how much water was converted into the vapor that filled the balloon under pressure. Then realize that they are doing this in a vacuum. 40 pounds of water will make a decent sized 'cloud'.
  • Been reading the Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars trilogy, have you?

    Deserts on earth are very different from the moon, in that even the deadest ones have ecosystems. Life on earth is very pervasive. So the comparison isn't really a good one.

    There's a lot of space. There's a lot of planets. Probably there's very little life, in comparision. Our priorities should reflect that.

    --


  • Considering how often a rockets "decide" to blow up during take off.. I'd rather have someone burry the stuff in my back yard.. then shoot it over my head and have it rain down on me.

    Mabey when they find a 100% reliable method of geting it up there... but right now I'd rather not have them try.

    Ex-Nt-User
  • We missed our chance, we should've named it the A ark and sent some of the less sentient humans on a free trip to colonize the moon.
  • The only problem with taking out the garbage, is that nuclear waste is very heavy. The energy required to lift nuclear waste only into orbit may negate the economics and any environmental possiblity of nuclear power. Not only that, there are different classes of nuclear waste: high level, medium, and low level that is the bulk such as things exposed to radiation such as gloves, spent containers, updated plumbing, etc... All this stuff does fit nicely in mine shafts waiting for the next time the crust recycles into the earth's core.

    If we develop a more efficient method of propultion to lift craft out of our atmosphere, this idea may become viable. Rocket technology is very effective, but requires an amazing amount of resources. The cost of the fuel may not justify powering a "garbage truck."
  • Trash on the moon may be a valuable resource for recycling. Nuclear waste is still energy that can be used until it is completely depleted for many years to come. Trash from a ship may be a valuable resource, much like the junk in a salvage yard. You may have many uses for moon rock, but a spent pipe may be readily used as a tool or put back in commision. Waste can also be used as construction material for building shields from the high speed projectiles in space.

    Don't be wasteful. Learn from nature and reuse everything. When we create our own environment on the moon, we will be forced to learn this lesson.
  • Are you kidding? Getting stuff to the moon is already difficult and expensive. Getting stuff to the sun is even worse. The last time we sent something vaguely near the sun it had to get a gravity assist from Jupiter.

    OTOH we could drop this whole planet in the sun and it wouldn't even notice. It's a good spot for nuclear waste if you can get it there cheaply enough to be worthwhile.
  • Yes, the sun isn't really all that big at all (in fact it's around the same size as the moon, as you can see with your naked eye). We need to be really careful that we don't smother it by shovelling our billions of tons of plutonium into it. ;-)
  • Perhaps Space 1999 was a prophecy not just a scifi series?

    Yikes! I sure hope not! I'd sooner believe that Ren and Stimpy's "Space Madness" was a prophetic vision.
  • Over at http://www.spaceviews.com there's an article on this plan (Which I think is a damn good idea, BTW) which goes into more detail about what observation platforms are going to be used. The Hubble is apparently one of the satellites scheduled to be used.

    This is definitely a good use of the probe. As many others have pointed out, it's mission is over and there is a chance (a small one, but a chance nonetheless) that a major scientific discovery could be made. I'll be eagerly waiting for any results.

    And this is completely off-topic, but I really wish that the Russian space agency would get it's ISS components finished...
    Sorry for the editorial. :)
  • > Uh, orbits degrade because of atmospheric drag. No atmosphere on the moon.

    you're forgetting that the earth's atmosphere extends beyond the moon's orbit (not very dense of course). there's also drag from tidal forces, solar wind, drag from cutting through magnetic fields, etc, etc.

    even if it was just cutting through interstellar hydrogen it would eventually stop.
  • First off, any eventual settlement we put on the moon (or mars, etc.), will only aid in alleviating the effects of human population pressure on earth.

    No, it wouldn't --- you can never relieve population pressure by expanding to new territory. You can't transfer people fast enough. There will always be orders of magnitude more people being born than you can ship to the lunar colonies.

    You may be able to get resources that will help the situation back home --- but it wouldn't work as a population relief valve.

    Second, in the case of the moon, it is already dead. What possible damage could we do that would make it any more dead?

    Just because it's dead doesn't mean that it's worth preserving. Deserts are dead, too, mostly --- and we preserve those. There's no ecosystem, so it's a lot harder to make a mess (you don't have to worry about upsetting any kind of balance), but the counter to this is that any mess made on the surface is permanent. The Apollo hardware is still there. There are metal-lined craters from the hard-landed Luna probes, still there. If you strip-mine the surface of the moon, the scars will remain for millions of years.

    That said, I do think that hard-landing Lunar Prospector is a good, if rather drastic, idea.

  • How could you discover a more efficient way? The satellite has done its job and is no longer useful. Why would it be more efficient to do something else instead of plunging a dead satellite into the ground? Seems like the epitome of efficiency to me...

    There's nothing wrong with dumping garbage on the moon. It's pretty hard to create ecological problems on a lifeless rock that doesn't have an ecology to start with. I say we dump all our garbage on the moon, and maybe relocate Newark and Cleveland there while we're at it.
  • Damn, I wish I had some moderator points. Thanks for the info.

  • All info from the link [nasa.gov] in the original comment:

    Shoemaker "culminated his lunar research as science-team leader on the 1994 Clementine mission.

    The Clementine mission included a deliberate search for water near the poles of the moon, Carolyn Shoemaker noted, but Clementine data did not settle the question. The search for water at the lunar poles is a key goal of Lunar Prospector."

    So, Shoemaker is getting buried on the moon AND accomplishing one of the original goals of the Clementine mission in the process, which Shoemaker was science leader on. Cool.

    And...

    "After a 105-hour cruise to the moon, the spacecraft will be placed in lunar orbit and begin a one-year mapping mission from 63 miles above the lunar surface. When its battery fails at the end of its lifetime, an estimated 18 months [the press release was dated Jan 6/98] or more from now, Lunar Prospector and its special payload will crash on the moon."

    They knew it was going to crash from the beginning, so they don't need to slam it into the lunar poles to bury him. But they ARE trying to continue Shoemaker's research by hurling the probe containing his ashes at a specific place. Way, way, way cool. Gotta love those NASA guys. Let's hope the experiment is a success.

  • I for one fail to see the problem. How many "natural" impacts has the moon suffered since its formation? Does it really matter if an iron cored meteor fragment or a spacecraft causes the impact? That spacecraft was made from materials that can be found all over the solar system. Just because we've put it into a new and useful form doesn't make it any less of a natural object. This whole business of trash and littering is based in emotional reasoning. The real danger to our world isn't from the so-called litter, but from the concentration of substances which are toxic to life (substances which - by the way - already permeate the earth in a chemically fixed state). Every ounce of "industrial waste" and "trash" existed in some other state before we refined it. Even the nuclear wastes existed, but in a different atomic configuration.

    Here's an example. A big corporation wants to dig an open copper mine about 100 miles from where I live. A byproduct of that effort would be a large holding basin of toxic material - a byproduct of the copper extraction method. Those toxins are already in the earth there, and the environment/ecosystem isn't the least bit affected by it -- tons and tons of the stuff. The toxins are not dangerous because they are chemically "fixed" in the ground. Now we come along and isolate those toxins in the process of isolating the valuable metal ore. We have the ability to re-process the toxins into a safe(r) state, but to do that would make the entire effort un-profitable. So instead of cleaning up the mess, we just leave the concentrated "toxic waste" lying in an open pit. The elements that were harmless, possibly beneficial, in diluted/fixed states are now free to wreck havoc with the ecosystem. It is this continuing behavior that is killing the world and us.
  • Year: 1999 (August if I remember rightly)
    Moonbase Alpha torn out of Earth's orbit by nuclear explosion...

    ...perhaps caused by NASA crashlanding a nuclear probe on the moon and

    >The moon's just a barren rock

    not turning out to be true after all? Perhaps Space 1999 was a prophecy not just a scifi series? Shame we haven't built a base up there already though.

    :-)
  • Assuming of course we fully understand the sun's mechanism and that dropping a load of nuclear waste into it won't trigger a chain reaction which switches it off...
  • No, it wouldn't --- you can never relieve population pressure by expanding to new territory. You can't transfer people fast enough. There will always be orders of magnitude more people being born than you can ship to the lunar colonies.

    Actually, while this is true in principle, not having off-earth settlements would still be worse. Population pressure will increase regardless, and if we have no other relief for that pressure, we will overwhelm earth that much faster, and with far more permanent results.

    Just because it's dead doesn't mean that it's worth preserving. Deserts are dead, too, mostly --- and we preserve those. There's no ecosystem, so it's a lot harder to make a mess (you don't have to worry about upsetting any kind of balance), but the counter to this is that any mess made on the surface is permanent. The Apollo hardware is still there. There are metal-lined craters from the hard-landed Luna probes, still there. If you strip-mine the surface of the moon, the scars will remain for millions of years.

    Agreed. However, at some point, we still have to make the decisions that give us the best chances to preserve humanity. We can only hope that we learn enough of our lessons to use future resources wisely.

  • Spreading out (Score:5)

    by Aleatoric ( 10021 ) on Wednesday June 02, 1999 @09:10PM (#1869199)
    Personally, I think this is a good experiment, even if we had to build a brand new probe to accomplish it. The fact that we can use an existing one is frosting on the cake.

    There's no logic in the argument that this kind of experiment is going to lead to more destruction of some 'natural' environment by man.

    First off, any eventual settlement we put on the moon (or mars, etc.), will only aid in alleviating the effects of human population pressure on earth. If we find water in some form on the moon, it is an additional aid to forming a settlement that can eventually be self supporting (admittedly quite a ways into the future, but a good goal, nonetheless).

    Second, in the case of the moon, it is already dead. What possible damage could we do that would make it any more dead? On the other hand, if we settle it and make it habitable at least in some degree, we gain a great deal. For example, one thing to consider is the potential for some sort of global catastrophe on earth. Unless we spread ourselves out a bit onto other planets, a global catastrophe *could* cause the complete end of the human race. Settlements on other planets would give us at least some chance of avoiding complete extinction.

    Finally, if we argue that we should avoid any efforts to settle other planets in the name of preserving their pristine characteristics, we would actually open the door to furthering the damage we already do to earth. Like it or not, human population is not going to diminish (barring a catastrophe), and as it expands, the drain on existing resources will only get worse. By offloading some of this drain onto other planets (and their associated resources), we have the potential to halt (or even reverse) the ecological damage we do to earth, and, if we have learned our lessons, we might even be able to use all of our resources (including those on other planets) more wisely, and maybe we can avoid repeating our mistakes.

    To close off any avenue of expansion to our poplulation will eventually result in the extinction (or mortal damage) of the human race, either through population pressure, resource depletion, or a global natural disaster.

  • You of course are assuming that we might eventually plan to fix this planet. Unlikely. I would rather have that we used this planet before we discard it. Whats the use to humanity, if we move on of course, to leave Earth sitting along with all its mineral resources? With Von Neuman's mathematical discovery of the von Neumann engine and advances in nanomachinery we might find that it will be relatively easy to mine the Earth to oblivion. It may be a virus-like idea, but who says thats not the future of humanity anyways. Terraform Mars? Unlikely, I say that it will probably be mined first. But why not? There's more life to exploration of the galaxy (or further) than to sit watching your field and hoping that a comet won't fall out of the sky.
  • Its highly highly highly unlikely that a satellite would ever strike another (except in polar or geostationary orbit). But what isn't unlikely is that the orbit will eventually degrade and the satellite will 'land' somewhere on the moon. Since its going to hit eventually its a good idea that we tell it where.
  • I don't know the height the satellite is above the moon so I don't know the speed exactly. I would guess that orbiter is at least 50-100 miles above the surface and is probably travelling from 7-15,000 km/hr. Does this sound right? Perhaps slower, but it is most definately traveling many thousands of km/hr. The moon doesn't have an atmosphere (a trace atmosphere) so you won't have to worry about a terminal velocity. We probably only need the ice to be up 5 miles or so. With the low gravity of the moon, I think that its a realistic chance. The hardest part is probably finding the correct crater to drop the satellite into.
  • Too bad that plenty of Apollo hardware (LEMs and Saturn-V fourth stages) had already been deliberately crashed on the moon to do seismic surveys in the 1970's...
    -- ----------------------------------------------
    Vive le logiciel... Libre!!!
  • If you read the histories of the Apollo missions, you will find that a lot of hardware was intentially crashed into the Moon for research purposes.

    The astronauts installed seismometers on the moon as part of the ALSEP project. The seismometers detected the seismic waves produced when lunar modules and Saturn upper stages hit the Moon. This produced data on the structure and composition of the Moon. Scientists on Earth have done similar work using the seismic waves produced by earthquakes and nuclear weapons tests.

    The USA and USSR have landed/crashed a large number of probes on the Moon. Here [moonpage.com] is a list of the missions.

  • That's fine.

    When we all move off this rock we can leave you and your progeny behind.

    If the human race does not further explore the realms of the Universe, you have to wonder why we are here. It would be an awfully big waste of space.
  • I don't know about anyone else but I would like NASA to plan a return mission to the moon. I mean the last mission was in 1972 for God's sake. How many of us are actually old enough to remember it. If we send a mission to the ice caps, we could probably actually do some practical experiments to prove/disprove the feasability of a Lunar colony.

    One thing you have to say about the cold war with the USSR. We at least tried to keep up with the Joneses.
  • /.'s Preview button should include a spell-check routine. Sometimes I think I'm the only person on the internet who cares about speling and grammer.

    BTW, this is a legitimate feature request. How hard could it be to implement?

  • Unfortunately, the public would probably take a dim view of any transport of radioactive material into space, no matter how safe. Remember the arguments about the Cassini space probe which contained a couple of grams of plutonium? Our nuclear waste is probably here to stay.

  • like I said I dont care about the moon or mars or anything that doesnt already have life there. My point is that, there iss no reason we have to kill everything we see. Homo Sapians could try and grow up beoynd being mindless killers. If we were even half as advanced as we think we are, We could have done alot more and learned alot more. If we had spent half the energy we've wasted killing life and each other with our great toys we could have already Been on every planet in this solar system.
  • "First off, any eventual settlement we put on the moon (or mars, etc.), will only aid in alleviating the effects of human population pressure on earth"

    I would be VERY supprised if the moon could EVER support enough people to take even a small amount of population pressure off of the earth. I think that the only solution to our population expantion problem is what china is doing at the moment (I personally believe that they are being a tad conservative). I believe that if we need to go to the moon (or another planet) for the sole reason that we have too many people, then it will be too late.
  • moreover, have you heard about the conspiracy of john glen and others when they first walked on the moon that they did see aliens?

    Except John Glenn never went to the moon.
  • The problem is that space vehicles usually
    use nuclear fuel for their power generation.
    With this they will contamenate that place
    on the moon for future generations...

  • Don't think it's really junk... think of it as historic artifacts. As soon as we have a colony up there, the old landers, lunochods, and probes will be tourist attractions and hopefully protected as monuments :)
  • I am in Germany, man. No Futurama here yet for a long time to come. :-(
  • NASA Scientists are geeks. You gotta love them.
  • This was a joke, you dimwits! :)
  • Actually, almost all spacecraft launched by the US since 1980 have used solar panels for power.

    That's why the mission to Saturn raised such a stink. It was the first nuclear-powered mission since 1979. Pretty much any missions that are staying inside the orbit of Jupiter will be solar powered.

    See this link [nasa.gov] and look toward the bottom for "...surface mounted solar cells..."

    Or this one [nasa.gov] for more info on the vehicle. Or, finally, the FAQ [nasa.gov], which says:


    What powers Prospector?

    Lunar Prospector is run by rechargeable, solar-powered nickel-hydrogen batteries.



  • speling????


    -- Keith Moore
  • ..think of it as historic artifacts...

    For an interesting take on this, read "Steel Beach" by John Varley (and anything else you can find by him!) There's a park and museum built around the lunar landing sites, but few people bother looking at it... Great book, anyway.
  • Joke aside, nobody pointed out 'internet'. It's Internet.

    :)
  • I don't know the height the satellite is above the moon so I don't know the speed exactly. I would guess that orbiter is at least 50-100 miles above the surface and is probably travelling from 7-15,000 km/hr. Does this sound right?
    Lunar Prospector recently dropped from it's mapping orbit of ~100Km to something like 25Km. Orbit time is around 1hr 40min, so I figure a speed of ~6500kph. It should leave a dent.
  • While the plan is good thinking overall, what is the plan to pick up the garbage later?
  • Moon doesn't have any atmosphere. We can get around part of the problem by wearing space suits but what about all the cosmic debris that hits the moon every day? It's all pock marked with craters because there isn't any atmosphere to burn up or slow down all the rocks that crash in to it. I think that makes the moon a less than good candidate for off-Earth population.

    Some kind of stellar mining operation maybe, even a fuel depot for your trips to Mars but I don't think you'd want to by Lunar realistate and build a big geodesic dome house.

    I say pollute it, if we can safely get our pollution there, which we cannot do yet.

  • The weight isn't the only problem, how about reliability of the launch vehicles? What is the Titan IV's record, 1 successful launch and 3 shanked? The Delta IV isn't much better. I'm not sure that I would want nuclear waste being released into the lower atmosphere because of a launch vehicle explosion.

    Just a thought.

  • Friend you are correct.
    Rest assured the sun is *much* larger than the moon.
    Folks, it's a god-damned star!
    The Earth would fit in to the sun about a million times over.
    The previous poster is either on crack or another sad example of the scientific-illiterates being produced by the American education system.
  • Yeah, I saw the winky-smiley.

    But the sad truth that sort of thing wouldn't be too surprising - take a look at the number of people who are worried about ruining the lunar "environment".

    It's no excuse. I must flame.

  • I've got this from the BBC News [bbc.co.uk] site:

    The impact - equivalent to smashing a heavy car into a wall at a speed of more than 1,100 mph - is an attempt to confirm the presence of ice at the lunar poles.

  • Run, do NOT walk, to your local DVD warehouse and buy a copy of From the Earth to the Moon. One of the best $100 I had ever spent, and worth every penny of it. Even if you're not a Nerd (tm), it is a great story, with drama, heartbreak, and joy.

    Best thing to ever come out of HBO, IMO.

    One whole episode, Spider, is devoted to the design, and construction, of the LMs.

    *minor spoiler*

    *Sniff* brings a tear to my eye remembering the scene where the project manager just stands there looking at the first one, realizing after all those years it wasn't coming back.
  • I guess I'll have to watch it again to be sure. Not that I mind much, FtEttM just plain fscking kicks bootay.

    ObOnTopicStuff:
    I think NASA reusing there probe to search for water is a great idea. I don't mind my tax dollars spent there (Who wants a "contribute 5 dollars to space exploration" checkoff on their tax forms? I do, screw the presidential campaigns), but it's cool they thought up this way of using it. As far as trash/using up the water goes:

    1. It's not going to be trash people. Think about it. 4k km/sec will turn the probe into its constituient atoms. They're not gently landing, after all. I do wonder how big the crater it's going to make will be. Maybe they could gain some extra science off of that? Crater generation dynamics or something.

    2. If there is so little water, that the impact of Lunar Prospector coudl possibly use up a significant fraction of it, then it probably isn't worth using.
  • Just bashing some thoughts around :) I would have thought "offending the wolves" was a better argument, personally, than getting all logical.
  • I know this is pretty old, sciencewise, but does anyone else find it a bit scary that NASA has a realistic chance of detecting a crash landing into the moon that displaces a grand total of 40 pounds of ice?
  • Clearly he is a great fan of Grammer, IN, zip code 47236.
  • >It would be an awfully big waste of space.
    It's only an awfully big waste of space if you assume the universe was built explicitly for us... While I fully support exploring every facet of the unknown, I don't do so because I think it's mankind's destiny... I think mankind as a whole has no great purpose. We are here, we breed, and we die. Purpose is something for the individual. BTW, nice handle.. :)

    Geek-grrl in training
    "Give a monkey a brain, and he'll swear he's the center of the universe."
  • There's not enough pressure to keep it in a liquid form, so it vaporizes violently.

    Geek-grrl in training
    "My body is a temple. Want to come over for midnight mass?"
  • If I'm not mistaken there's already plenty of space junk up there - the lunar rover(s?) comes to mind. In any case, crash-landing the junk somewhere controlled is a heck of a lot better than letting it orbit until it smacks into some other body at thousands of MPH and does damage - possibly to a satellite or other craft.
  • Let's see here. One nuclear powered satellite + (possible) Lunar ice field = contamination of the Moon's water supply?
  • cos otherwise the reporter would do it incorrectly anyway and then screw it up worse for NASA.
  • hehe. wasnt that the plot for some movie ? aliens bombing the crap outta earth cause we blew their spaceships up with nukes.
  • Yes, and it's not quite fair to call Cassini "nuclear" powered. It's RTGs run by the heat from radioactive decay of the Pu-238 dioxide ceramic, not a nuclear reactor as the lunatic fringe would have you believe. (Expect to hear the loonies yowling about Cassini's fly-by later this year.)

    Pendants might note that some of the Mars probes (like the crashed Russian one) used RTHs (Radioisotope Thermal Heaters), which keep the landers warm through the cold Mars night, but generate no electricity.

  • A similar thing happened with one of the missions to Jupiter (I forget which one, sorry. Haven't upgraded my neurons in years ;) Anyway, NASA decided to save money by not sterilizing the probe (had been done every time until then), so there was some concern that it might carry microbes or other undesirable goodies from Earth. Of course, the thing would eventually get crushed in Jupiter's atmosphere, but any microbes *might* just by some fluke be able to survive, thus making a putative (however unlikely) discovery of life on Jupiter in the future raise the unscientific suspision that we put it there ourselves.
    While I tend to agree that we should not "export" nuclear waste (or reactors) or undesirable lifeforms from this planet, I'll have to admit, as someone else commented above, it seems a very fitting end for Eugene Shoemaker (i.e., that he gets one last try to discover water on the Moon, and an extraterrestrial burial).

    (Yikes. Got an internal server error from /. Resubmitting...sorry if this appears more than once.)
  • It is wonderfull to see the amount of science that
    is getting done with these small missions. NASA
    has always had people that can work smarter and
    cheaper. The real change is in managment. I have
    had the opprotunity to work with NASA engineers. I
    am not too easily intimidated intellectualy. These
    guys intimidated me with there intellegence.

    BTW, The "big waste" projects aren't. While the
    small missions are getting real science done, they
    are not usually breaking new technological ground.
    The massive projects teach us how to do things.
    The benifits are harder to see. The whole computer
    age is a great example, and so is digital comms.

    Much of the technology we use today was pioneered
    by either the military or NASA. Personally I would
    rather spend the money on NASA.

    Big projects are not "bad" as long as they do not
    tie up all the resources, and prevent projects
    that actualy get something done. NASA seams to
    have a good mix right now. I hope it lasts.
  • All you can do is bitch about spelling? I happen
    to work very hard to improve my spelling ablity.
    It has never come easy. And very late at night
    after a 10 hour work day, and several hours being
    a single parent to a cocky teenager, I get a
    little tired, and my concentration waivers. The grammer was also weak and the thought progression
    stank. SORRY!

    I have worked with people whos spelling was
    perfect. They couldn't program worth shit.
  • I am totally in favour of this experiment. The possiblity of finding water is cool enough, but smashing stuff up in space is definitely worthwhile. Their analogy basically equates it to wrecking a $63M sports car. Just like in Ferris Bueller. Heh.
  • Hehe yah, crash it, crash it! It's always good to see NASA crash something that costs $63 million dollars. Maybe we'll see it in slow motion on "Real TV" someday. -NG


    +--
    Given infinite time, 100 monkeys could type out the complete works of Shakespeare.
  • Actually, according to the article referenced above, the probe orginally was intended to crash on the lunar surface when its power ran out. They've just decided to make the crash more interesting and useful.
  • You said "the first thing we decide to land permanently on the moon is a wrecked satellite?"
    Untrue!Untrue!
    You are forgetting that really short flagpole accompanied by a tattered flag just like the one hanging off the mobile home of my up the road neighbor. See we like to start small and classy first.
    Plus I think they left a pair of Neil Armstrong's shorts up there too, the landing was a liitle bumpy
  • I believe they are planning to use a 'Cool Hand Luke" style prisoner work team.('What we got here is failure to communicate')
    There is also the possiblity of an "Adopt a Moonway" program. You get a little sign next to your big pile of aluminum and plastic. Great tax write off dontchathink?
    This could also be a good place for friend of Presidents to find Government Jobs for worthy interns. I bet Vernon Jordan wishes he could get Monica first dibs on crashing into the moon.
  • This sounds like a good job for Jar-Jar and for the guy who thought he should be a star. He should become part of the moon instead
  • Hey--everyone complains about flamewars between *BSD and Linux users, but there are very few to defend us journalists on /. Journalists get a worse rap than lawyers here. *I*, for one, always get the physics on my stories correct.

    (point of information: my father is a lawyer, so don't start being mean to them)
  • I agree.. I have a picture in my head: first, we litter the moon with a few spent devices. Whenever Mommy Nature decides to exterminate humans, the moon is left uninhabited as well. Later, though (I'm talking 'space-later' here), the moon gets 'pollinated' by whatever organism, which eventually evolves into sentient beings (if all goes well). Then, our 'litter' could become holy artifacts to these beings. That would be cool.. reminds me of that plan to send human DNA into space...
  • What?! I hope your kidding.. I don't work for NASA, but I'm positive that the sun is in fact bigger than the moon! ;]
  • Consider the fact that proportional to population size, families in undeveloped countries have many more children (on average) than those who are better off. I think that the population pressure will eventually level off once we can get these undeveloped countries on their feet. (If they want to.) Discounting recent immigrants (1-2 generations), the US is actually at ZPG (zero population growth).
  • Uhh... you do remember where A ark landed, don't you?
  • What about the one where martians forbade us to build rockets because we might blow ourselves up w/nukes (ICBM's). So we immediately went to work on teleportation and dropped bombs on all their cities.
  • While I share your concern for the environment and such, I also feel that it would be nice seeing our tax dollars used to their fullest extent instead of simply letting an unuseable hunk of metal float around in space like the rest of them.

    Besides, if it bothers you that much to think we're leaving our "trash" on the moon, we CAN retrieve the darn thing that way. Plus, this may be a way to start colonization on the moon, which might be a wonderful solution to earth's overpopulation issues (i.e. China, Japan, etc.)

    Yes, the human race may spread like a virus a-la-The-Matrix-quote, but we also reason and can think consequences out. I have faith in NASA that this may be the first step to truly exploring the moon in depth.


    -- Shadowcat
  • Here's a tribute page for Eugene by Carolyn Porco:

    http://condor.lpl.arizona.edu/~carolyn/tribute.h tml

    I read an article about him recently. His studies of impact geology changed the basic foundations of modern geology. Previously geologists frowned apon geological theories that involved major catastrophies, instead assuming everything important happened through slow, gradual processes such as plate tectonics. All the craters on the moon were thought to be volcanic in origin. His studies suggested that exterrestrial object impacts happened on a periodic basis and greatly affected the landscape.

    His studies also greatly affected biologists, who adapted evolutionary theories to account for periodic impact catastrophies and resulting extinctions. Since then paleontologists and geologists have worked together to try to determine when major impacts took place and where.

  • Eugene Shoemaker's Ashes (Score:3)

    by scud1 ( 139288 ) on Thursday June 03, 1999 @05:45AM (#1869267) Homepage
    Anyone mention that Eugene Shoemaker's ashes are in the probe? I guess this would be the first burial on the Moon or any extraterrestrial body.

    It's rather fitting, though. He tried to become an Apollo astronaut, but failed due to health problems. He became one of the first experts on lunar geology and impact crater geology, and spent much of his later life searching for comets and Earth-crossing asteroids. He was the co-discoverer of the Shoemaker-Levy comet that struck Jupitor a few years back.

    I'm surprised NASA's not playing this up more. I know they had some protests from a Native American group a while back for sending his ashes up, but I'm not sure the details of that.

    Here's an article about the ashes:
    http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/news82.html

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