You can watch NASA give the moon a one-two punch.

[Nicktalopia]

WASHINGTON – NASA will throw a one-two punch at the big old moon Friday and the whole world will have ringside seats for the lunar dust-up.

NASA will send a used-up spacecraft slamming into the moon's south pole to kick up a massive plume of lunar dirt and then scour it to see if there's any water or ice spraying up. The idea is to confirm the theory that water — a key resource if people are going to go back to the moon — is hidden below the barren moonscape.

The crashing spaceship was launched in June along with an orbiter that's now mapping the lunar surface. LCROSS — short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and pronounced L-Cross — is on a collision course with the moon, attached to an empty 2.2-ton rocket that helped get the probe off the ground.

Thursday evening, about 10 hours before smashing into the moon, LCROSS and its empty rocket will separate.

Then comes the first part of the lunar assault. At 7:31 a.m. EDT, the larger empty rocket will crash into a permanently dark crater and kick up a 6.2 mile high spray of debris.

Trailing just behind that rocket is the LCROSS satellite itself, beaming back to Earth live pictures of the impact and the debris plume using color cameras. It will scour for ice, fly through the debris cloud and then just four minutes later take the fatal plunge itself, triggering a dust storm one-third the size of the first hit.

"This is going to be pretty cool," LCROSS project manager Dan Andrews told The Associated Press. "We'll be going right down into it. Seeing the moon come up at you is pretty spectacular."

Within an hour, scientists will know whether water was hiding there or not.

The mission is a set-the-stage venture dreamed up by the NASA office that has been working on a $100 billion program to eventually return astronauts to the moon. The return-to-the-moon goal is now being re-examined by NASA and the White House.

These are not crashes for the faint of heart. The two ships will smash into the moon at 5,600 mph, more than seven times the speed of sound. The explosion will have the force of 1.5 tons of TNT and throw 772,000 pounds of lunar dirt out of the crater. It will create a new crater — inside an old one — about half the size of an Olympic swimming pool, Andrews said.

But don't feel bad for the moon. It gets crashes this size about four times a month from space rocks. But the difference is this one is planned and at just the right angle and location to provide interesting science for astronomers. The southern polar region is a prime landing possibility. This crater, called Cabeus, is one where astronomers think there is a good chance of hidden ice that would be freed by the crash, describing the dirt there as "fluffy."

The crashes will also be a good show for the folks back home, which was always part of NASA's plan for the probe, Andrews said. The crashes will be broadcast live on NASA's Web site. The Hubble Space Telescope and other larger Earth telescopes will be trained at the moon. Observatories and museums are planning viewing parties in at least three countries.

And amateur astronomy buffs with telescopes who live west of the Mississippi may try to catch a glimpse of it through their own instruments because it will still be dark outside. People who live in areas where it will be daylight won't be able to see it from home telescopes.

"A lot of telescopes will be tuning in," said Terry Mann, president of the Astronomical League, an umbrella group for local amateur astronomy societies. "You might see something you might not ever see again."

Amateurs need at least a 10-inch telescope to look at the crashes and what they see will only be a small part of their overall view in the scope. And they won't see the impact itself, but the spray of debris flying up.

This is all happening during a peak week in a yearlong celebrations commemorating the 400th anniversary of Galileo using a telescope to see Jupiter's moons. On Wednesday evening, the White House planned a star party for middle schoolers and about two dozen telescopes.

In Boulder, Colo., the Fiske Planetarium on Friday will serve free bagels and coffee to early rising moon crash spectators. The planetarium plans to stream a live video feed from NASA, train its own 24-inch telescope to watch the crash, and let people look for themselves through two research-grade telescopes.

"People like explosions one way or another," said Matt Benjamin, the planetarium's education programs manager. "And a celestial explosion is going to excite them."

___

Science Writer Alicia Chang in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

___

On the Net

NASA's LCROSS site: http://www.nasa.gov/mission(underscore)pages/LCROSS/main/index.html

Where to observe LCROSS crash: http://www.nasa.gov/mission(underscore)pages/LCROSS/impact/index.html

How to view with own telescope: http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/observation/amateur.htm

[Nicktalopia]

Comon guys show some excitment !!!!!! The Moon is about to get blown up
This is the best thing to ever happen since........... Since kamil was forced to Show ID at an event's entrance.

[rob]

^hihi


WHAT?!!? THOSE YANKEES ARE BOMBING THE MOON NOW??!!? WHAT A BUNCH OF A**HOLES


Sign the "Save the Moon"

[Nicktalopia]

I don't think there will be any side effects, the things we could do if water is found on the Moon are unlimited, lunar based space station -- one way trip to Mars.
Besides the moon gets hit by objects with much larger impact round the year yet it's still there and the sea tides are still stable.

[Genesis]

Plenty of stars to look out tonight here above my house and been sky watching for a good while but I have to give it to ya; I didn't know about the ''lunar bombing'' up till now.

So, eyes up tomorrow!

[Nicktalopia]

Nice artist concept image.








RE: Inside NASA's Plan to Bomb the Moon and Find Water
Clarify for people what is said in the article. 1. They are not bombing or blowing up anything. They are crashing an empty rocket fuel tank into the moon, similar to crashing a school bus. No explosives involved but simple Mass times Speed equals force. 2. They are doing this on a ridiculously small budget compared to the conventional thinking and ways. 3. Have a little faith, because this recession will not last forever. Anything we learned and planned now will become useful in the future. Thinks like hydrogen fuel cells came from NASA and much more. 5. Having a moon base will cut cost significantly for future exploration to Mars. (No we cannot go to Venus; it is a giant ball of gas, maybe one of the moons from Jupiter way in the future) 4. Rockets don't use fossil fuel, but solid fuels.

[TranceFusion]

Now's that interesting!!

Nick, shut up

[Nicktalopia]

People are being way too dramatic about this.
Saying it'll effect us as humans just because our bodiest consist of 75% water and any damage to the moon will have side effects on us and on sea tides !!
Glad NASA is going forward with this, can't wait for the results announcement, this could be a huge turn in space discovery.




There are potentially two types of water on the moon: exogenic, meaning water from outside sources, such as comets striking the moon's surface, and endogenic, meaning water that originates on the moon. Taylor and his colleagues suspect that the water they're seeing in the moon's surface is endogenic.

Since the rocks and soils that compose the moon contain about 45 percent oxygen, mostly combined in silicate phases, the question before researchers is where the hydrogen component of the water they're seeing with M3 came from. In this case, they believe it may have come from an astronomical phenomenon called the solar wind.


These images show a very young lunar crater on the side of the moon that faces away from Earth, as viewed by NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. On the left is an image showing brightness at shorter infrared wavelengths. On the right, the distribution of water-rich minerals (light blue) is shown around a small crater. Both water- and hydroxyl-rich materials were found to be associated with material ejected from the crater.
Credit: ISRO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS/Brown University


Schematic showing the stream of charged hydrogen ions carried from the Sun by
the solar wind. One possible scenario to explain hydration of the lunar surface is
that during the daytime, when the Moon is exposed to the solar wind, hydrogen
ions liberate oxygen from lunar minerals to form OH and H2O, which are then
weakly held to the surface. At high temperatures (red-yellow) more molecules
are released than adsorbed. When the temperature decreases (green-blue) OH
and H2O accumulate. Image courtesy of University of Maryland/F. Merlin/McREL

[Genesis]

Nick, where do fish out those astronomy news from? Do you get them mailed monthly to your inbox?

What's the expected time of the impact by the way?

Edit: Never mind. It's Friday morning at 7:30 EDT which is 11:30 am GMT / 1:30pm Beirut Time so we can't see shite.. lol

Nasa TV will stream it online at http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

[Nicktalopia]

It won't be an easy view anway so i guess live streaming is the best option.

[e-sam]

3 hrs and 22 mins to go

[Nicktalopia]

33 minutes people

[Nicktalopia]

LCROSS_NASA twitter updates:
RT @worden Successful end of mission. Now we have to see what the data shows

[Genesis]

Yea I watched on Nasa TV and it totally sucked arse.. lol

I couldn't see a thing. And to think that I could have seen the crash in my binoculars!

I'll just wait for earth-based telescope photos. Much better that way.

[Nicktalopia]

I thought we were going to see a real impact, like when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slammed Jupiter.