NASA Takes Aim at Moon with Double Sledgehammer

Space junk or space research?

Scientists are priming two spacecraft to slam into the moon's South Pole to see if the lunar double whammy reveals hidden water ice.

The Earth-on-moon violence may raise eyebrows, but NASA's history shows that such missions can yield extremely useful scientific observations.

Yahoo.com article .

Seanie.

I hope that......you know.......nobody is out there watching :shock: ....I mean what ever would they think.

It would not be the first time such a thing was done

declan

NASA's history shows that such missions can yield extremely useful scientific observations.

Ha Ha. Very funny.

NASA tried to hit the Polar region of Mars.... but Mars hit NASA first:

www.skyandtelescope.com/news/3310281.html?page=1&c=y

www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsyst...e_probes_000407.html

(As with Mars, it might be fun trying to locate them after they get lost.)

It's a one way trip and I would have thought it was an expensive way to find out whether there is water ice on the moon. maybe they are just getting rid of old stock

seroiusly - I thought there was a probe sent recently to survey the moon and provide this information and came up blank?

seroiusly - I thought there was a probe sent recently to survey the moon and provide this information and came up blank?

If I remember correctly, it wasn't blank, just inconclusive. The probe was Clementine, launched in 1996 for a 2 year study of the Moon. There could have been another one since, but I'm not sure.

Seanie.

The European Space Agency's SMART-1 probe searched for ice at the Shackleton Crater at the lunar south pole.
See:
www.moontoday.net/news/viewsr.html?pid=22403

(Irish connection: Shackleton,explorer of Earth's south polar region, was from Kilkee,County Clare:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton )