SMART-1 Crashes Into Moon
September 4th 2006 04:51
This post may have very little to do with health or fitness, but all the same it’s about a pretty cool Science event, and as Science does make the world go round I thought I’d share it with you.
The lunar orbiter SMART-1 was due to smash into the moon at 7,000 km/h at 0530 GMT on Sunday. It would have bounced off the surface, making a crater 3-10m wide.
Because the impact site will be in darkness, the glare of the sunlit moon’s surface won’t bother observations from earth. Ground-based telescopes should see a plume of dust lit up by earth (earthshine), and could reveal the composition of lunar soil at the crash site!
This sounds like a much cheaper way of gathering this information. Why would you pay to organize astronauts to take off on a space mission to the moon when you can just crash a satellite into it without any hassle?
The good news for amateur astronomers is that if some of the debris from the impact flew up to a height of 20km, it would catch the sunlight and a bright cloud might be seen, even with your average small telescope or binoculars.
See the results from the collision here.
Information from New Scientist
Image part of the GNU Free Documentation License
The lunar orbiter SMART-1 was due to smash into the moon at 7,000 km/h at 0530 GMT on Sunday. It would have bounced off the surface, making a crater 3-10m wide.
Blowing an extra crater in the moon...
This sounds like a much cheaper way of gathering this information. Why would you pay to organize astronauts to take off on a space mission to the moon when you can just crash a satellite into it without any hassle?
The good news for amateur astronomers is that if some of the debris from the impact flew up to a height of 20km, it would catch the sunlight and a bright cloud might be seen, even with your average small telescope or binoculars.
See the results from the collision here.
Information from New Scientist
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