Posted Aug 15, 2008 at 10:06AM by Isaac C. Listed in: NASA, Spacecraft, Space Missions Tags: Mars, NASA, crater, LCROSS
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Inside NASA's Plan to Bomb the Moon and Find Water - Image 1 Inside NASA's Plan to Bomb the Moon and Find Water - Image 2


Mars, Mars, Mars. If you talk outer space these days it's all about Mars. Well now the spotlight is on our own Moon. You may have heard of NASA's plan to bomb to the Moon on their quest to find water. Part of their overall plan to build a permanent lunar outpost. So just how do they plan to do it exactly?

By late February or March of 2009, NASA will send the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) to the moon. Now to get to the Moon, the LCROSS had to use a massive 5000-pound rocket-fuel tank. This particular one attached to the LCROSS as the upper-stage rocket is called the Centaur.

Once it's done its duty to bring the LCROSS some height above the Moon, the Centaur (pictured above, left), will be dropped on a kamikaze journey to the lunar surface (pictured above, right). When it hits the surface, the Centaur will create a 16-foot deep crater, launching a 6-mile high debris cloud up in the air.

The LCROSS will be analyzing this lunar dust plume to see if any water (or ice) exists.



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[Via Popular Mechanics] Permalink  |   Email this  |   Linking Blogs   |   Digg It!

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