Bombing the moon (2009 Oct 8)

[tytower]

Suppose its just like sitting down with a .22 and plinking at cans.You assume the ants won't shoot back .
But what if they did ?
Did anyone think to advertise in some way we were going to blow chunks out into space and then fly another bomb in through that dust.
If there is a race sitting quietly behind the moon who have nuclear rockets then we might just be in for it from tomorrow

[iamlucky13]

They didn't shoot back the last dozen or so times we've hit the moon.

The relevant APOD link:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091008.html

[neufer]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091008.html
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002125/
http://www.planetary.org/news/2009/0911 ... eus_A.html

Suppose its just like sitting down with a .22 and plinking at cans. You assume the ants won't shoot back .

But what if they did ? Did anyone think to advertise in some way we were going to blow chunks out into space and then fly another bomb in through that dust. If there is a race sitting quietly behind the moon who have nuclear rockets then we might just be in for it from tomorrow

-------------------------

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Men_in_the_Moon

<<The First Men in the Moon is a 1901 scientific romance novel by the British author H. G. Wells. The novel tells the story of a journey to the moon undertaken by the two protagonists, the impoverished businessman Mr Bedford and the brilliant but eccentric scientist Dr. Cavor.

At the Moon, the two men at first discover a desolate landscape, but as the sun rises, the thick atmosphere of the Moon, frozen out overnight, begins to melt and vaporize. They are captured by the insect-like Moon men (referred to as "Selenites"), who have formed a relatively advanced society underground. After some time in captivity, Bedford and Cavor manage to flee. Bedford finds his way back to the spaceship and returns to Earth while Cavor becomes injured and is unable to escape recapture by the Selenites.

Back in Britain, Bedford undertakes to publish the details of the story, including some additional material from Cavor received through one-way radio transmission from the Moon. Bedford learns of Cavor's meeting with the "Grand Lunar", who is the ultimate ruler of the Selenites and the Moon. At this meeting, Cavor inadvertently portrays humanity as predatory, delighting in war, and with little redeeming value. In response, the Grand Lunar decides to cut off all contact with the Earth. Cavor's transmissions end in mid-sentence...>>

[bystander]

http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/mission.htm
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROS ... index.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROS ... index.html

[Orca]

The plumes are expected to be visible in telescopes about 10 inches in diameter or larger, with the timing favoring Moon watchers in western North America and the Pacific.

Anyone lucky enough to have access to a 10 inch telescope and planning to catch the impact? I wonder if my paltry 4.5 Newtonian might at least get a glimpse, if just a tiny increase in light. Doubtful.

Anyone know how long will the plume be visible? Hours...or perhaps even a day or two?

[neufer]

The plumes are expected to be visible in telescopes about 10 inches in diameter or larger, with the timing favoring Moon watchers in western North America and the Pacific.

Anyone lucky enough to have access to a 10 inch telescope and planning to catch the impact? I wonder if my paltry 4.5 Newtonian might at least get a glimpse, if just a tiny increase in light. Doubtful.

Anyone know how long will the plume be visible? Hours...or perhaps even a day or two?

There is no air to hold it up so it will probably be 5 minutes at most...as Nick Cabeo could tell you:

<<The crater Cabeus is named for Niccolò Cabeo (February 26, 1586 – June 30, 1650). Cabeo observed the experiments of Giovanni Battista Baliani regarding falling objects, and he wrote about these experiments noting that two different objects fall in the same amount of time regardless of the medium. He also performed experiments with pendulums and observed that an electrically charged body can attract non-electrified objects. He also noted that two charged objects repelled each other.

His observations were published in the works, Philosophia magnetica (1629) and In quatuor libros meteorologicorum Aristotelis commentaria (1646). The first of these works examined the cause of the Earth's magnetism and was devoted to a study of the work of William Gilbert. Cabeo thought the Earth immobile, and so did not accept its motion as the cause of the magnetic field. Cabeo described electrical attraction in terms of electrical effluvia, released by rubbing certain materials together. These effluvia pushed into the surrounding air displacing it. When the air returned to its original location, it carried light bodies along with it making them move towards the attractive material. Both Accademia del Cimento and Robert Boyle performed experiments with vacuums in attempts to confirm or refute Cabeo's ideas.

Cabeo's second publication was a commentary on Aristotle's Meteorology. In this work, he carefully examined a number of ideas proposed by Galileo Galilei, including the motion of the earth and the law of falling bodies. Cabeo was opposed to Galileo's theories. Cabeo also discussed the theory of water flow proposed by Galileo's student, Benedetto Castelli. He and Castelli were involved over a dispute in northern Italy about the rerouting of the Reno River. The people of Ferrara were on one side of the dispute and Cabeo was their advocate. Castelli favored the other side of the dispute and was acting as an agent of the Pope, Urban VIII.>>

By opting for the main Cabeus Crater I would be surprised if a 10"
is large enough but this should give you more or less the idea:

[iamlucky13]

The plumes are expected to be visible in telescopes about 10 inches in diameter or larger, with the timing favoring Moon watchers in western North America and the Pacific.

Anyone lucky enough to have access to a 10 inch telescope and planning to catch the impact? I wonder if my paltry 4.5 Newtonian might at least get a glimpse, if just a tiny increase in light. Doubtful.

Anyone know how long will the plume be visible? Hours...or perhaps even a day or two?

I really wish I did, but I'm just planning on watching the NASA broadcast. Since you're in Portland, did you hear that OMSI is having a viewing party? They'll be showing the broadcast in their auditorium for free. It starts at 3:30. I might go out there myself.

Conditions from the Portland area will probably be hazy tonight. In clear conditions I'd expect a 50/50 chance of discerning a bright spot with that kind of scope, but not with all that wet air overhead.

Others can look here to see if there's any registered viewing events in their area, or connect with local astronomy groups:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROS ... index.html

[iamlucky13]

For those who plan on trying to view it, I found a visualization showing the context on the moon, and I believe it ends with a projected plume shown to give you a sense of scale:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn9LMyrW ... r_embedded

[Orca]

There is no air to hold it up so it will probably be 5 minutes at most...as Nick Cabeo could tell you:

Yeah, I thought about that not long after I posted. In my head I was thinking of of the comet impactor...where there wouldn't be enough gravity to hold on to the ejecta. I don't suppose this impactor will have enough mass to create a large enough explosion so that the material doesn't all return to the surface.

[neufer]

There is no air to hold it up so it will probably be 5 minutes at most...as Nick Cabeo could tell you:

Yeah, I thought about that not long after I posted. In my head I was thinking of of the comet impactor...where there wouldn't be enough gravity to hold on to the ejecta. I don't suppose this impactor will have enough mass to create a large enough explosion so that the material doesn't all return to the surface.

It's hard to imagine that the particles could have any greater velocity than
the incoming satellites themselves and hence could not have escape velocity.

Note the ~800m long rays below would correspond to
200m high parabolic trajectories lasting only about half a minute.

Now gases should go much higher but it is possible that Cabeus crater
is too deep for anything much to be observed directly from earth.

LROC nabs image of the Apollo 14 S-IVB impact site
By Emily Lakdawalla Oct. 8, 2009

<<As a reminder that we've been crashing stuff into the Moon for decades, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) team released today a photo of the crater made by the spent upper stage of the Saturn rocket that lofted the Apollo 14 mission to the Moon. It was intentionally crashed on Feburary 4, 1971 in part to remove it from orbit and in part to provide a "boom" of known time, location, and force to be recorded by the seismometer left behind from the Apollo 12 mission. The dry weight of the S-IVB (which had expended nearly all of its fuel) was about 14,000 kilograms, 7 times heavier than the Centaur that will be smashing into the Moon tomorrow as part of the LCROSS mission. The crater that the S-IVB left behind is fairly small but it did produce a spectacular (if dainty at only 1.5 kilometers across) set of rays, which were intriguingly light in some places and dark in others.>>

Impact site of the Apollo 14 S-IVB from LROC

On February 4, 1971, the spent upper stage of the Apollo 14 launch vehicle was intentionally crashed into the Moon, leaving behind a small crater with a pretty set of rays. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter camera imaged it on September 8, 2009 under high sun conditions, emphasizing the differently shaded rays emanating from the crater.>>

[kovil]

If you go to the NASA TV website:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

They will be having a live coverage of the Moon impactor event !

3:18 am PDT today Friday. Less than 2 hours from now.
[at least that's what I read there yesterday, tho right now I don't see anything about the Moon event on their webpage.]

Here's the schedule of live events page:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/M ... aking.html

at 6:15am EDT will be the live coverage of the Moon impactor event !
They are starting their coverage now, with some backup schematics of the LCROSS's orbital trajectory lead up to impact. 2:45am PDT

Gadzooks, it's been a 37 year hiatus since we began our journey to the Moon in 1969 and the Moon Program ended in 1975, with the last astronauts to walk there in Dec '72; and this mission is described as the first step in our decisive return to the Moon !

[neufer]

The plumes are expected to be visible in telescopes about 10 inches in diameter or larger,
with the timing favoring Moon watchers in western North America and the Pacific.

Anyone lucky enough to have access to a 10 inch telescope and planning to catch the impact?
I wonder if my paltry 4.5 Newtonian might at least get a glimpse, if just a tiny increase in light. Doubtful.

Video from Palomar Observatory on LCROSS impact night

[ConchosShiner]

Surely there is a better way to find out what the moon is made of?
Somewhere along the line this is all going to catch up on us, and I can't help feeling sooner rather than later.

[Chris Peterson]

Surely there is a better way to find out what the moon is made of?
Somewhere along the line this is all going to catch up on us, and I can't help feeling sooner rather than later.

What's going to catch up with us?

This is one of the most effective ways to study any object. We routinely use energy to knock the surface off of things we're studying, from the scale of subatomic particles to planets.

[NoelC]

That Palomar video was simply stunning. Next best thing to being there (and of course, seeing nothing). Not even a sun glint off the impactor as it flew in.

If they were looking to "stir stuff up", why just fly an impactor into the surface? Why not send up some serious explosives? Surely they could filter out the known components of the explosive device to determine what is under there, and they'd have gone a helluva lot deeper.

And I assume the LRO or something is taking high res photos of the impact site.

Why haven't we seen or heard more follow-up info about this?

-Noel

[Chris Peterson]

If they were looking to "stir stuff up", why just fly an impactor into the surface? Why not send up some serious explosives? Surely they could filter out the known components of the explosive device to determine what is under there, and they'd have gone a helluva lot deeper.

Filtering out the components of any chemical explosion would be difficult or impossible. How do you know you're not also filtering out some component of the Moon's surface? Water is a byproduct of all the high energy explosives I'm familiar with. And without better knowledge of the surface characteristics, how do you estimate the depth of a crater? The intent was to go down a few meters at most; what if a crater produced by explosives went much deeper, and contaminated the results? (They are looking for shallow subsurface water, after all.) I guess we'd be second guessing the decision to send such a powerful explosive!

One reason the mission was inexpensive is because using the kinetic energy of the rocket body is free. And it produced a significant yield: about the equivalent of two tons of TNT. What would have been the mission cost of hauling a few tons of high explosive along as a payload? (Remember, this mission was hitchhiking on another.)

There was no mission requirement that ground-based telescopes be able to detect a plume. Indeed, the fact that they did not provides useful information. The mission was designed so that the following probe could monitor the plume, and by all accounts it did that successfully, and no doubt results will be made public once the papers are prepared.

[NoelC]

Ya, you're probably right. A drilling robot would be more the right move anyway.

-Noel

[bystander]

LCROSS Impact Data Indicates Water on Moon
NASA: LCROSS Mission Update - 2009 Nov 13

The argument that the moon is a dry, desolate place no longer holds water.

Secrets the moon has been holding, for perhaps billions of years, are now being revealed to the delight of scientists and space enthusiasts alike.

NASA today opened a new chapter in our understanding of the moon. Preliminary data from the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates that the mission successfully uncovered water during the Oct. 9, 2009 impacts into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus cater near the moon’s south pole.

The impact created by the LCROSS Centaur upper stage rocket created a two-part plume of material from the bottom of the crater. The first part was a high angle plume of vapor and fine dust and the second a lower angle ejecta curtain of heavier material. This material has not seen sunlight in billions of years. ...

[makc]

come to think about it: they bomb permanently shadowed crater and find water vapor in explosion. what if that water hosted the only colony of life on moon? now the evidence is destroyed.

[BMAONE23]

I dunno about that but would any residual fuel in that rocket contaminate the water supply in the area?

[Chris Peterson]

I dunno about that but would any residual fuel in that rocket contaminate the water supply in the area?

The Centaur rocket body that crashed into the Moon first uses hydrogen and oxygen for fuel. No chance of contamination there. The observing probe started with a few hundred kg of something nastier for fuel, but was literally running on empty at the end (there was a malfunction earlier in the mission that resulted in losing virtually all their spare fuel). So assuming there was no more than a few kg of remaining fuel, and a kinetic crash equivalent to a couple of tons of TNT, I think it's safe to say that any contamination must be trace at the most.

[BMAONE23]

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0 ... overy.html

A tale of Lunar life, once thriving, now spiraling to extinction!

As NASA heralds the day they discovered water ice on the moon, a hereto for unknown microbe was flourishing on pure water ice at the Lunar south pole. The Microbe might have proven beneficial in the extinction of one of man’s major scourges, Cancer. Lunaris Bacillus Miraculousae or Miracle Moon Bacteria as it would have been more commonly known, was thriving at the Lunar South Pole in a sheltered spot that gained no solar exposure in 4 billion years. Their evolutionary stage was such that they were a multi-cellular bacterium species that was immune to most of mankind’s diseases. Their utopia was destroyed earlier this year as a care package from Earth, a spent rocket that carried a probe and some residual hydrazine propellant slammed into their ecosystem creating a massive explosion, polluting their pure water ice supply and bringing about events that will lead to their eventual extinction.

NASA applauded their successful efforts to “Prove” the Moon had water ice and could therefore support an inhabited lunar base at a far less expense than if the needed “liquid of life” for all carbon based life forms had to be transported there from the Earth. Cheers arose from the Mission Control Room at Kennedy Space Center as the data began pouring in and the discovery of Water Ice was verified. Nobody knew that thriving Bacillus colony was there or that hydrazine exposure would render them sterile.

It is most unfortunate though that, not only was this now polluted water ice the only potential source of water on the Moon, but; the water ice was also the only source of the needed “Liquid of Life” for the only Bacillus Miraculousae colony on the Moon.