LCROSS
We do try to appear sophisticated, but really, when it comes down to it, any mission which involves hitting something is going to do well in the PR stakes. It was fantastic to spend the day in the company of the LCROSS team. LCROSS is the sister spacecraft to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and is due to crash an impactor the size of a large bus (and we did find a bus to film for comparison purposes) into the lunar South Pole just three months after launch, which should be in October. The time from being selected to launch is 30 months, which must be some sort of record, but everything seems to be going well. The stated goal is to provide the definitive yes or no as to whether there is water ice in substantial quantities in the region; very controversial evidence from previous missions and from radar has suggested there might be (and I, personally, wouldn’t put it any more strongly than that) and if there is then the South Pole becomes the absolutely default choice for future manned bases. Not because you’d need to drink it, but because it provides hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel. Anyway, regardless of whether the water is there or not, this is a way of digging beneath the surface of the Moon in a landscape very different from those which Apollo sampled. Even better, the flash LCROSS produces will be magnitude 6 (best guess), bright enough to be seen in binoculars and thus visible to almost anyone. I would suspect that the impact, in January 2009, will have more people looking at our nearest neighbour simultaneously than at any time since Apollo. In the meantime, you’ll only have to wait until March to see the wonderful interviews we filmed today, along with the bus.
on November 15th, 2007 at 6:50 am
A peaceful mission to send along a robot with a neat and tidy drill or something just wouldn’t be the same!
I really look forward to watching that, and it’s lovely to see you blogging again, Chris. So California is far away enough to escape the e-mail deluge! Now I know where to go when I start to feel the same about papework . . .
on November 15th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
With all due respect every drop of Lunar H2 sould be conserved as a “Common Heritage” [Outer Space Treaty] in the form of water in a life support loop and not squandered as rocket fuel to the first bunch of space cowboys to happen upon it.
Naturally Oxygen, Titanium, Iron etc need not be conserved as they are available in abundance and I note that a Aluminium particle/ LOX monopropellant powered rocket has enough SI to achieve Lunar escape velocity!
on November 15th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
An impact in January 2009 ties in very nicely with the International Year of Astronomy!
on November 16th, 2007 at 11:49 am
I think Dave Lermit is thinking of Article 11 of the “Moon Agreement” - The Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (opened for signature 18 Dec 1979 and entered into force 11 July 1984). Unfortunately, the USA did not ratify that Treaty and therefore it is not binding on the USA. The last time I looked, it had only 12 ratifications and 4 signatures.
There is nothing similar in the Outer Space Treaty of 1963.
on November 16th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
There isn’t anything to say that any mission to make use of what LCROSS might find wouldn’t be international, and in the meantime it’s not as if they’re keeping their results to themselves. If the Chinese are next to the moon, they’ll be looking at this as a potential base.