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Tomorrow, NASA is going to send three objects (apparently 3 stages of a rocket) crashing into a crater on the moon to look for signs of water. Current projections are for an impact of 4:30 a.m. PDT. To see what they are aiming for, take a look at this picture from the Astronomy Photo of the Day. Thanks to my Dad for the tip - he keeps me up-to-date on all the cool photos posted on the APOD website!
Just in case you happen to be up at that hour, you can check it out on NASA TV (or I'm sure see replays later).
Any guesses as to whether or not it has water? My (totally unscientific) guess is that they will find water.
Well, I stayed up until the time advertised which was 3:30 AM but then found out that the actual impact would be much later. So I missed the actual event which turned out to not be much of a visual event at all. Apparently there was not enough flyrock or debris thrown up that it did not get out of the shadow inside the impact crater and so there was no reflection of the debris from the sun. However, NASA seems to think that the scientific aspects of the event will be very successful. AMLD
ReplyDeleteI'll try to post the details when the research data comes back. I did hear it was a bit of a non-event from a visual perspective because the camera just went white, but NASA said that was in line with the experiment. We'll have to wait for the data to get processed.
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