HTTP:: Lunar Crater for LCROSS Impact Established
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The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission to the Moon launched on the same Atlas V rocket as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), and it is currently circling the Earth's natural satellite, waiting to drop its payload to the surface. It carries with it an empty Centaur rocket stage, which it plans to drop inside a lunar crater. Astronomers and physicists hope that the collision would throw enough dust and soil into the air to allow spectrometers to identify traces of ice or water. “The purpose of our missions is to see if there may indeed be some water ice located in some permanently shaded crater positions on the south pole of the moon,†Daniel Andrews, the LCROSS project manager, explained, quoted by Space. According to the latest timeline, the $79-million impacter will drop its rocket stage to the Moon's surface on October 9th. In late August, LCROSS consumed more than half of its fuel, about 140 kilograms, or 309 pounds, in a series of!
maneuvers that prevented it from straying off-course. The main idea behind the mission is not to send the impactor hurtling at the lunar surface, but at the bottom of a crater, where the highest chances of water-ice existing are. As the thinking goes, if water once existed there, then shielding from the effects of sunlight and co...
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