Moon impact to make base dream closer
Published 09 October, 2009, 15:40
Edited 10 October, 2009, 11:01
NASA has crashed a satellite and its booster rocket into the moon's surface, a moment closely scrutinized by scientists across the globe.
They smashed the booster of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) into the surface inside the Cabeus crater, near the Moon’s South Pole at a speed of 9,000kph, or seven times the speed of sound.
The impact was expected to kick up an estimated 250 tons of lunar dirt. The moon dust will be analyzed by the satellite on its way through the debris, before it is also hits the surface. The secondary cloud will be further studied by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), another NASA probe on a mission to the Moon.
Scientists are looking for signs of water and other minerals which could be used to supply any future lunar base. Since part of the Cabeus is never lit by the Sun, chances are high that considerable amounts of water have accumulated there over millennia. Traces of hydrogen, which forms part of water molecules, have already been detected on the Moon by Indian and NASA lunar missions.
It's not the first attempt to create explosions on the Moon. In 1959, the Soviet Union planned an atomic blast there to show off its military might, but the project was abandoned for fears the bomb could fall to Earth instead.
Space expert, Dr. Yury Karash, says the next step after the evaluation of the data gathered by LCROSS will be: “the return of the Americans and some other countries together with them to the Moon, and the more direct analysis of the Moon’s soil and its natural resources in order to explore the Earth’s natural satellite, in order to establish a permanentl-inhabited base on its surface”.
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