T minus 9 hrs. 10 min till impact. NASA TV coverage begins @ 1015 GMT (0315 PDT). Link to coverage http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/main/index.html.
Separation image (inset) and interpretation (using Celestia add-on).
You've had much better luck with simulating it in Celestia with that add-on than I. In Celestia, I had the moon behind the Centaur as seen from LCROSS, and there doesn't seem to be the moon in the live feed.
O.K. Bend over please.
This may sting a little.
(Ouch!!!!!!)
Astro0, what's the FOV of that Celestia view? Reason I ask is that the Moon wasn't visible in the post-separation raw images as far as I could see; just curious. (Great composition, BTW, as per your usual!)
(EDIT: I see that Hungry already mentioned that.)
Humph.
Stupid Moon.
Have to go to work, so I'll miss the whole thing.
(scuffs toes on ground)
Not fair.
Have fun everyone! Looking forward to hearing all about it when I get back.
nprev... I've got no idea of the FOV for that image...I just thought it looked nice and helped orient me to the 'real' image...not even sure if it's right! Remember me I'm the 'artist' not the scientist
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=698608&l=95856614f8&id=1311707986, ignorant mode here, where's the impact site in this photo?
Haha, it's the very southern point in that image. I don't suspect your image is detailed enough to resolve Cabeus crater.
Thanks guys!
Every time I see the impact story on the news, the media tends to over play the impact.
I can already see that. Bombing the Moon, that's it. Fortunately or not, we're living in a sci-fi shaped world. And there are people who are afraid of the impact. But there's no danger. Impacts occur very often.
Good morning all.
Broadcast starts in a minute:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
Can't watch video at work . I'll make do with JSC stills.
I usually take snapshots, but I'm also at work and don't have the graphics programs. I'll try however to do the best I can from here.
Recent Twitter post:
SSC_Final_ME_sph = 310.52235358536 E -84.7311739853509
about 1 hour ago from web
LCROSS Centaur and SSC target coordinates (Lat., Lon. in ME): Centaur_Final_ME_sph = 311.302088477883 E -84.6743872273512
about 1 hour ago from web
I see they are targeting an individual molecule...
Phil
If that's a water molecule is that such a bad thing?
The target molecule will probably be destroyed. Perhaps they're hoping to detect the water molecules adjacent to that one?
Moon!
Don't know if it was the Moon imaged by the previous flyby or a live downlink. Too noisy here.
All instruments are operating nominally, that's great news, great chance of getting data!
Live - and getting bigger!
I didn't realise Hubble was going to be observing things!
Yes, this is the Moon seen by LCROSS in real time!
Yet another screenshot coming. Unfortunately I won't be able to combine them all - no graphics programs here.
http://img132.imageshack.us/i/lcross3.jpg/
Which crater is Cabeus in that screenshot?
http://img12.imageshack.us/i/lcross5.jpg/
It really reminds you how big the moon is when you consider how long left there is and that the moon is already filling up the entire frame, we always consider the moon small next to earth but in it's own right it's still enormous.
Can anybody spot Cabeus in the LCROSS view? Having trouble getting oriented this morning, even with coffee
YAWN .... I am tired! Going to watch on the large screen TV. I'll check back here in a while.
In the current view on screen now, Cabeus is just below and to the left of center
'Mornin' everyone. Just got the NASA feed working on my computer; @#$% cable company here STILL don't carry NASA TV.
(The marine layer has torpedoed plans to set up my scope!)
try this link !
http://www.mmto.org/lcross/
(Are we supposed to eat peanuts now?)
Visible...
http://img19.imageshack.us/i/lcross9.jpg/
And IR image...
http://img38.imageshack.us/i/lcross10.jpg/
Bit humorous there when they went thru the station checks and concluded with "go for impact". It's not like they can scrub...
(Are we supposed to eat peanuts now?)
NO! Eating peanuts during a crash (even when deliberate) confuses the flying spaghetti monster and then he won't be able to be relied upon to guide our future soft landing missions down safely with his noodly appendage.
The image is growing visibly frame by frame. This is so cool....
Thanks for the link, MahFL! Slooh was rained and clouded out at both locations.
Cloudy here...
http://img405.imageshack.us/i/lcross14.jpg/
Latest snapshot
And poor Stu is missing it!
Impact flash! Woot!
EDIT: err. maybe not... that's just a surface feature...
ehhhhhh, did I miss it? I didn't see a thing on the video.
http://img39.imageshack.us/i/lcross21.jpg/
This is probably the thermal confirmation, I think
I didn't see anything either
I didn't see anything...
but the R/T lithobraking was cool!
Dim flash suggests soil impact rather than rocks...good news!
I never saw an impact flash (at least one that I recognized as such).
Is what we saw the best quality LCROSS images?
I saw NOTHING !!!!, thats my story and I am sticking to it.
NASA TV showing the IR now. There's a hotspot, all right.
I'm going back to bed. You kids woke me up for this?
http://img96.imageshack.us/i/lcross23.jpg/
Is this the hot spot anyway?
I think that's just a sunlit crater rim nprev. Zvez, that mid-IR image is just mostly noise from excessively high gain after the last sunlit hotspots went out of frame.
One of the commentators identified that hotspot as sunshine hitting the crater rim. I thought it looked like an impact site myself - perhaps there is some confusion about that.
Some of us were doing an image sequence with a 0.9m telescope in Arizona, with the moon nearly at zenith. Nothing obvious in Cabaeus as we watched the data come in. I'm turning around now to try aligning and differencing the image to see whether we can tease out a more subtle plume signature.
Edit 40 minutes later - difference imaging shows no plume detection within limits from telescope shake and seeing (which can be improved but not in real time). That makes sense if the SSC only saw a subtle signature.
10 a.m. - LCROSS Post-Impact News Conference - AMES (Public and Media Channels)
10 AM Eastern Time
7 AM Pacific
14:00 GMT/UTC I think
Jack
I too failed to see anything. You should have heard my brother, 'Well, where is it?'
oh well, that was anticlimactic. As it's going to be hours at least before other images are released and with the news channels in full mediagasm mode over the prez' Nobel, I really don't expect any data until next week. g'nite!
I'm already dreading the headlines: "NASA Moon Bomb A Dud", etc. ad nauseum. Sure hope the science was a success; have to find out after work. G'night/G'morning everyone.
I'm very sorry you felt disappointed. I can understand why - no bright flash. But the real treasure could be coming to us.
from discussion on nasaspaceflight forum --
http://www.gargaro.com/MaRvInWaVs/boom.wav
I recall hearing that science return aside, they would be quickly able to determine if the mission was a success or not. While I have very little doubt that LCROSS will return data, has there been any word from the LCROSS team itself?
From LCROSS shortly after Centaur impact...
Oh definitely, absence of the Centaur impact aside, I definitely enjoyed it. I, too, leaned closer =)
!, mchan!
Oh, I'm not disappointed personally, and of course the real gold will be in the properly acquired & calibrated data. In all likelihood the popular media's gonna be a bit snarky, though, and that's always not the best for NASA.
I was thinking that this would be a good trick to try on one of Mercury's poles someday, with the caveat that the chase spacecraft would have to do a grazing flyby--not an impact-- & survive at least long enough to play back the observations.
I would say it's a safe bet if water is found in a shadowed crater, it's a common thing that could be found in ALL solar systems.
For anyone interested, there is an archived version of NASA TV's coverage http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_details&gid=1055&Itemid=.
It's 109mb, I'm downloading it now and will try to put together an edited version of the last few minutes before and after Centaur and LCROSS impact.
NASA news conference at 10 AM EDT
They've got some 'splaining to do.
Maybe they impacted a lunar bog ?
Quote David Morrison, Director of NASA's Lunar Science Institute"I think we're all a little bit disappointed that we didn't see anything, but 90% of the data has not yet been seen."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17951-spacecraft-kamikaze-smashes-into-moon.html
May be it was a splash, not a kaboum: this has to be liquid water
http://www.mmto.org/lcross/
Go here for streamimg video from MMT possibly showing the impact plume. But Palomar reportedly saw nothing.
Phil
Nothing from Lick
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/10/09/lcross-impacts-moon-science-data-pending/
I was watching MMT and the closeup did seem a bit blurry. The other view seemed ok.
Maybe they missed the target;)
Somewhere way back, someone had posted an animated GIF showing a lunar impact as seen through a telescope. There was a tiny flash (you could almost imagine it going "piff").
I'd assumed that vaporizing a football field worth of lunar regolith would've made a bigger flash and a sunlit dust plume.
Guess not....
I was somewhat bemused by the confusion over the commanding being given to the Flight Director in the final 60 seconds before Centaur impact, to change a setting on the NIR instrument. "Was that November IR?" How much time was lost in that communication? Hopefully it didn't affect the collection of data. Just shows the unintended consequences of having two instruments with similar sounding acronyms, NIR and MIR.
Going back over the video, there was something in the infrared images that caught my eye.
I've taken 4 frames and put them in an animated gif.
Mmmm ... I've seen spacecraft disappear into craters before.
Oh how I wish Ames was as on the ball as JPL is with media graphics. Any sign of these cool slides anywhere on the Web?
There was a 'flash'
Here's the mission's image showing the 'flash' and I think it matches nicely to the spot I noticed in the http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=6244&view=findpost&p=147654.
I´ve a comment about the poor media coverage of this important event, i think this a important mission, can you imagine if we found water in the moon? all the things we can possible found with this discover? , NASA needs more advertise around the world to obtain more benefits, more support from all of us. The information in our present era is like gold, everybody needs to have it....
I would to say thanks to the people in this web page to keep us informed and post pics from the most important part of the mission, and of course a WELL DONE to NASA for this flawless mission.
Rough animation from the frames of last 2 minutes of transmission (starting about 2.5min after Centur impact). The very last frames aren't included...
Interesting comment regarding the integrated spectral data after the initial peak (Centaur impact).
"The observation that the line didn't return to zero is interesting." (paraphrased)
Did we make a smoldering crater?
Indeed there was a flash. Hardly more than a few pixels. But its there and the UV radiance data being presented proves it. The size is as expected...
Yes but the whole episode was over-hyped. Todays public expects to see what they expect to see !
A pixel or 2 on a camera ain't going to do it. As a co-worker said "is that all we get for 79 million ?"
The difference is between the sudden frisson of an awe-inspiring spectacle compared to the subtle beauty of scientific data analysis.
My version of IR sequence near Centaur impact (16sec total duration in the video)
Can someone put up a scale bar on the IR images so we can get a sense of size?
So some people are angry because nature did not behave the way we thought?
I agree with Paolo.... this IS what science is all about.
Personally I am excited that they got GOOD data. Now let the scientists do their jobs. And let them do it correctly with no rushed results.
Craig
We all know what he meant, and he did go on to say that he needed to await scientific consensus. But the way he phrased it was unfortunate. I know he was tired and all, so it's hard to blame him, but unfortunately he came across as smirky and smug, and the whole panel seemed to avoid the issue of the lack of a flash, which didn't produce a great impression; I worry the press won't treat the team well.
Shoulda put a bigger "bomb" on it :-)
A newclear bomb ?
It was a superb opportunity for ground-based observatories, curious to see what Hubble saw...
http://keckobservatory.org/index.php/news/a_new_view_of_the_moon/
(.)
I just watched the replay, seems they underestimated the bandwidth needed, also were getting confused as to which camera they were talking about, and the main commentator of course said "I am not sure what we saw, which translates to "we did not really see anthying just now did we.....?".
They seemed pleased at LOS, presumebly confident they hit the Moon !
Emily, as ever, says the right things, in the right way :
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002157/
Here - a less positive commentary on events
http://jesseknoll.com/blog/?p=270
This is more or less consistent with the result from the Lunar Prospector impact. No visible plume there either although a small one was expected. One difference so far is the detection of the sodium line mentioned at the press conference. They did not see even that after the Prospector impact.
http://www.ae.utexas.edu/research/cfpl/lunar/pressrelease/discussion.html
The truth surfaces....
""There's not going to be these grand, spectacular images of ejecta flying, kind of what you've seen in animations or cartoons," LCROSS principal investigator Tony Colaprete told reporters Thursday. "It's going to be more of a muted shimmer of light, but that muted shimmer of light contains all the information we need to answer our questions."
I wonder what % of people watching knew about that statement........I did not.
I think the press conference was premature, people were tired and the data was too tentative, to the point that there was an initial statement that they weren't going to state if there was water found, what the reporters were likely to be there to hear about.
The MIR flash detection image was intriguing, and the adaptive optics image from Palomar was amazing. the Apache point telescopic video was reasonably good quality, but the MMT enlarged view was so awful it shouldn't have been shown. Unfortunately the Ranger style spacecraft image sequences were not shown! Too many squiggly lines were dwelt upon to be appropriate to a non technical audience.
Colaprete said in response to a question 'I see something in the spectrometer data but I can't say anything more than that', then he apparently vacillated in the awareness he had of that data, finishing an exchange of questions thus:
Q:"Will you know later this afternoon...if there's water or ice?" A:"...I probably will but I'm not gonna tell you."
He (presumably unintentionally) looked like he was coyly BSing the press, something you don't want to do. A day of rest and analysis and image preparation would have worked wonders. As it is the info barely crept above the 'noise' in discussions of the event in the popular media. It's hard enough to get people interested in the Moon and gathering reporters prematurely to tell them the big news isn't forthcoming doesn't help.
I am glad to see Ames get more cool missions. I'm sure that the optimum means of getting information out in the aftermath of a successful mission, for which they can be proud, will evolve with experience. The data from various sources will eventually speak for itself and provide a composite view of this rather dramatic experiment.
I remember Deep Impact and was expecting something similar. The observing craft must have been much farther away in this case.
If they did enough analysis to determine they got a sodium signal, why not water? Would that indicate any water signal they might tease out of the data will be weak at best?
Lack of water/ice is consistent with http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0907/06kaguya/ results. The LRO press kit mentioned that in addition to the water theory, the decreased neutron flux seen by Clementine (and I gather Chandrayaan-1) near the poles could also be explained by hydrogen deposited from solar wind, being more stable and able to accumulate in the cold polar regions. So is that now the leading theory?
I was happy with the press conference. I was happy seeing the squiggly lines even though I don't know what they mean. Being told that they were there, that they contained plenty of information to be teased out over time, was good enough for me. I do not wish to be robbed of such small pleasures by those who would prefer nothing rather than a brief, incomplete story. I'm happy with the preview and my appetite is whetted for the main course when it comes.
I suggest that those who are not happy with incomplete information wait two weeks before reading another story about the mission. Better yet, wait for the release of the preliminary papers in December.
Did anybody happen to get any screen caps from the NASA TV briefing this morning? In particular I'm looking for this one:
After all the pre-flight hoopla, the public need to be given something. CNN has seemingly dropped all mention of the mission because they have nothing to show. At the press conference it was mentioned that the new crater created by the Centaur was seen. Could a picture of the new crater at least be released to the waiting media?
When they say it "was seen," it was just one pixel. So probably not what CNN really wanted.
Still, they could have done a much better job getting their images to the media. Ames doesn't have JPL's polish when it comes to putting out graphics for media. Right now actually I'm trying to collect all the useful images I can for posting in a more easy-to-browse format, but it'll be too late to help anybody who's got a news deadline today.
--Emily
From HardOCP
Hmmmmm been out all day, just got in and been catching up on events, Had a feeling we might get this reaction if we didn't see lots of "fireworks" lol.
You are the man, Tman!
Can we change the thread? It's about the science/spectroscopy, not about the media. A science thread would be nice, since there IS science and this forum will suffer if it follows the media trail.
Given that they saw sodium in the early results, this item from 1999 concerning natural impactors may be of interest:
http://sirius.bu.edu/moontail/
Surely what might be useful at a press conference would be to show:
1) The Deep Impact images (yes, apples to oranges comparison, but stay with me)
2) The Smart 1 impact movie (from memory hardly any flash, but clearly visible material in a ballistic trajectory, and yes, I know that was a glancing impact from a smaller impactor)
...and just go - "look, we really didn't know what to expect, we are as surprised as you are about the lack of a visible flash, but its that very uncertainty that has brought us here in the first place, this is still a mysterious area and we are trying to probe those mysteries. And you were/are along for the ride, we are all learning new things at the same time"
P
I'd just like to report that the BBC news coverage was very good. The emphasis was on the success of the impacts and data collection process. They reviewed the hoped-for science and mentioned the absence of a visible flash almost in passing. As usual radio was better than TV.
As someone who has called attention to the LCROSS mission in another thread ("Earthlike Mars?"), and who was in fact expecting the mission to be a "game changer" in terms of immediately clearly identifying water at the lunar south pole, let me express some thoughts that others of my ilk may be feeling.
The basic idea is that a disappointment is best handled by acknowledging it as such -- THEN you can wake the morrow morn with some more hopeful thoughts. As it is now -- due to the hemming and hawing of NASA and the media -- we are still stewing over the question of whether the initial results of the mission were or were not a disappointment -- and of course they were.
NASA absolutely did publish statements to the effect that the impact might be detectable through a 10" telescope, when in fact some of the largest telescopes in the world saw virtually nothing.
The shepherding spacecraft itself detected, as far as publishable images are concerned, only a changed pixel or two, and that in only one of the monitored bands.
And none of this bodes well for establishing the presence of significant amounts of water. I'm not saying that this is now impossible -- I'm just saying that when there is virtually no data in the visible band, there's probably not going to be much in the other bands; not to mention that we were only looking for small amounts of water to begin with.
So c'mon, NASA, help me get over this -- let's admit that the initial results have been a big disappointment -- and then let's carry on from there.
Well...It's definitely far far far too soon to rush to judgement about any aspect of the science return. Consider the frenetic pace of the data acquisition period, and now the big job of reducing this vast mass of data begins...and only after that's done can analysis begin. "Instant science" JPL-style really only works with pictures, and that aspect of the LCROSS payload was mostly for nav/post-impact localization.
However, it's hard not to say that expectation management was not well performed. Perhaps it should be called the "Kohoutek Effect": an interesting and/or unusual astronomical or space event is oversold in 'ooh-aah' potential to the general public, and the result is disappointment...even worse, a percieved lack of credibility ("But they PROMISED Kohoutek would be the comet of the century!"...or even "Does a fizzled flash mean no water?") As has been stated earlier, it's damn hard to predict the results of a novel experiment or event, and if the outcome WAS known with certainty then it wouldn't really be science.
The lesson that should be learned here for future space would-be spectaculars is beware the Kohoutek Effect. It can be done; JPL's getting pretty good at it. It may explain ESA's PR efforts in part as well; one way to manage expectations is to not foster any, but that's the other extreme from today's experience. There's a balance to achieve.
Wow; that sure was a long way to say "patience, grasshoppers!", huh?
Nprev, Kohoutek may be a better example than you realize! For are not comets bodies of rock and ice which sometimes flare spectacularly and unexpectedly, and sometimes not? And do we not hope the floor of Cabeus to be of the same composition? So maybe there are related phenomenon at work here . . .
While the fizzle nature of this one is sort on an opposite of Deep Impact, my cynicism tells me that what's it's probably going to be most like is the Galileo probe... a we-just-hit-the-wrong-place-and-we're-not-changing-the-models kind of sentiment. It's hard for me to put a happy face on that sort of result. And everything worked perfectly in both cases! Sigh. Ah well, if this sort of thing went by the book, it'd be pretty boring, too.
I'm pretty sure they didn't know what to expect as far as the kind of plume seen. I'm getting the feeling that the media over-hyped this (and the animations we were shown didn't help much either). Science isn't just pretty pictures. I'm quite happy-faced about the spectroscopy. Even if there wasn't a wonderful ka-boom, there's still great data gathered, and I look forward to seeing the results of this mission.
Yeah...that really is a million-dollar question. Hell, amateurs with modest scopes have picked up flashes from shower meteor hits (particularly the Leonids, IIRC) before, which are really small & really fast but nowhere close to that Centaur in terms of impact energy.
Somebody half-jokingly said something about it being gulped up by a deep dust pile. That's almost beginning to sound plausible!
Although no spectacular impact plume was observed, some reports:
(Nothing so far on IRTF and Lick observatory websites)
Keck 10.0 m
http://keckobservatory.org/index.php/news/a_new_view_of_the_moon/
Hubble Space Telescope 2.40m
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/26/full/
Palomar 5.00m
http://palomarskies.blogspot.com/
I didn't expect much.
"When you kick the surface, [the dust goes out in] a little fan which, to me, is in the shape of a rose petal," recalls Armstrong. "There's just a little ring of particles--nothing behind 'em--no dust, no swirl, no nothing. It's really unique."
If the rocket stage happened to impact on a surface which was far off the horizontal, the ejecta plume coming out would be substantially less than predicted. For instance, an impact into the side of a cliff or steep slope, or the side of a big boulder, would see most of the initial ejecta thrown downwards. Only a small part of the rebound from that would end up exiting the crater, with greatly reduced energy. This might explain the lack of observed plume.
Of course, the chances of this also happening to the chaser satellite are low. However, given its much smaller size, I'm not sure what the initial expectations were of a plume from that, if any.
I'd hate it if NASA got so conservative that they didn't alert people to the possibility of something spectacular. All they really needed to do here was to say, up front, "Well, there's a possibility that no one will see anything from the ground, but there's ALSO a possibility that it'll be visible in telescopes as small as 10 inches, so it's worth taking a chance and watching." I'll bet a dollar to a doughnut there were scientists who strongly advised NOT hyping this, given the uncertainties, but they were overruled by PR types.
I can't entirely blame the PR guys, since public support is essential for funding, but it wouldn't have been THAT hard for them to hedge a little bit. Heck, someone once tried to explain to me why people watch things like football, basketball, baseball, etc. by saying that sports are fun to watch because "no one knows what will happen." Putting in some uncertainty in their claims might make these events MORE popular.
@nprev are we showing our age by remembering Kohoutek? Even a Geraldo reference seems dated now! :-)
--Greg
If I understood correctly, a sideways hit (as well as a hit where the Centauri would be vertical) were unfavorable. An angled hit would allow for more ejecta. As for impact flash? No idea.
I think there are two variables here, one is the trajectory of the spacecraft, and the second (that I was wondering about) is the attitude or orientation of the spacecraft.
With an impact in such a permanently shadowed region, how high should the plume ejecta rise so that they can reflect sunlight? Was there any prediction for that? I just think there is not much light there to reflect the plume dust, even if the plume is extended. Still, the detectors at other wavelengths should have seen more...
As (sort of) a member of "the media," I feel like I should speak up here. I had figured that people with telescopes on the smaller end of the scale probably wouldn't see anything. But given that there was a big effort to organize amateur astronomers (or at least provide plenty of relevant, up-to-the-minute information to them), and the organized events run at bigger observatories, I never, ever, once imagined that the biggest telescopes on the planet wouldn't be able to see anything. Frankly I'm still surprised and confused about the fact that even Palomar didn't see squat. I think it's totally reasonable to be surprised about that.
From my point of view, reporting on this event, I was never particularly interested in the view from telescopes of any size. I was wholly focused on the shepherd spacecraft. Everything seemed to function spectacularly. And yet there was basically no indication of any impact on the screen. Even the people doing the color commentary for NASA TV were confused about that. We were all geared up for a climax that never came.
When you get excited, and expect something that doesn't come, you're disappointed. That's basically the definition of disappointment!! And I think there's no incompatibility between understanding that the mission was successful and still being disappointed about the lack of any sign that the impact happened during the live event.
--Emily
Seemingly, the PR impact has been greater (if in an unexpected way) then that of the physical event...didn't realize that the title of this thread would become a pun...
Maybe LCROSS was swallowed up by hundreds of meters of 'snow'.
...swallowed by snow or some other unexpected surface feature in the shadow was my first impression. Maybe the combination of cold and H2O condensation inside the shadowed crater created a cushion type textured surface that is very deep. Who knows?
The impact did occur and on target, but no fireworks. There has to be a logical explanation.
But shouldn't there have been "fireworks", even without ice?
IIRC the reason the Deep Impact impact was so spectacular was because of the amount and fineness of the dust. The lack of any visible curtain probably tells us something pretty significant about the nature of the substrate but I'm not sure what it is. Mcaplinger, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it's the presence or absence of volatiles (which weren't expected to have been present at more than a couple percent as far as I understand) but the grain size and porosity of the material at the impact site that contributes most to the size of the ejecta curtain. When Deep Impact was about to happen, there was lots of discussion of Peter Schultz's experimental work on impacts into different kinds of materials, and I think their biggest concern was that they'd impact into a cohesionless target where there hardly be an ejecta curtain at all, just sort of a backward squirt out a deeply punched transient crater. (I think that was a "compression-controlled" impact as opposed to "gravity-" or "strength-controlled."
Funny, while I was researching that last sentence I was reminded of the manner in which the Deep Impact impact was unexpected. The Society ran a contest to see who could guess closest to the actual size of the impact crater, but the Deep Impact ejecta curtain turned out to be so spectacularly large and dusty that they were never able to see the crater. So we were forced to pick at random an entrant who'd been among the many who'd predicted a size between 100 and 250 meters, which pissed a lot of people off. Guess that goes to show you that making predictions is a bad idea
--Emily
I hope the Society kept the list. In mid-February 2011, you might have another chance to make the award a second time, albeit belatedly.
That's a pretty good point re excitation of ions; if there were a lot (& I mean a LOT) of volatiles in the impact plume, you'd expect it to light up like a neon sign once it was exposed to the solar wind.
I think the issue is whether there was a plume of any significance or not, though. Evidence thus far seems to indicate that there wasn't, and I'm not sure if the often-cited hypothetical 1% H2O content would have been a player in that at all if it does in fact exist; seems like too small a concentration to affect the material properties of the soil (if the Centaur in fact hit soil) at the impact site.
All we really seem know right now is that at that specific place where the impact occurred there was less material ejected then expected, reason unknown. The spectroscopic data should shed some light (ta-da, da!) on the ejecta's chemical composition but probably won't yield much information about its pre-impact physical properties. And when the dust finally settles (please, somebody stop me!), all the data & analysis will again only be truly relevant to that very specific point on the Moon's surface, and it might be erroneous to extrapolate the results as representative of the entire South Polar region.
I just thought of something. Some say that there wasn't much ejecta because maybe LCROSS hit something very hard like a boulder. Well, the hydrogen signature is definitely there in that crater. Most believe it is water ice...perhaps only 1% of H2O in the soil. That's an assumption, right? What if the concentration is a lot greater than that?
Water ice in space is much different than here on Earth. It cannot form crystals in a vacuum. We call this form 'amorphous ice'. It is very much like hard glass only far colder. Imagine LCROSS hitting a block of hard glass that is 50 or more meters thick. It might as well as hit a solidified lava flow. Am I right?
I'm sure there would have been some damage to the block. But the forces involved in the impact would have been directed differently than expected. Wouldn't there be a lot less ejecta going upward in such a case? Wouldn't most of the forces be directed more horizontally and the ejecta would be less likely to get above the rim? I'm not an expert on impact dynamics, so help me out on this one.
LCROSS could only be considered a failure in the sense that the Michelson-Morley experiment to detect "luminiferous ether" was a failure. Rather, both experiments were executed flawlessly and disproved the existence of the hoped-for substance (in this case volatiles). So disappointment rather than failure is indeed the bottom line.
I think we should wait for the results before making any conclusions. I've read that they obtained good data and need to process it thoroughly before making anything public.
There really is no reason to play a guessing game until we have all the information.
I didn't see it mentioned on the last several pages, but apparently the LRO detected an impact plume from LCROSS with its LAMP instrument and Diviner detected the impact crater. So it sounds like there was a plume created from the impact, but just not large enough to be seen from Earth I suppose. Hopefully they release the data from LAMP soon, if they haven't already
Some links.
http://lroupdate.blogspot.com/
http://www.diviner.ucla.edu/blog/?p=184
Although I must agree with Imipak that a 50m thick layer of ice would have been unambiguously detected by now, I like the way marsisimportant is thinking in his post about the strange physics that may go on in the vacuum and cold of the moon, which physics might prevent a ejecta cloud from forming -- and precisely because it DOES contain a lot of water.
For water, as we all know, does have a lot of enigmatic qualities from a physics standpoint.
Indeed, what happened with LCROSS might be akin in terms of science history to the recent discovery of water across the sunlit surface of the moon. Yes, theoretical physicists might know that high speed protons can interact with the oxygen atoms in rock to form water, but apparently nobody had thought of applying this arcane physics to the surface of the moon to predict the presence of water.
Likewise, there may be some arcane physics -- possibly involving water! -- which accounts for the non-appearance of the ejecta cloud. In fact, Emily recently mentioned in another context that the water molecule is very sticky.
I haven't noticed negativity in the UK media, some "Americans bomb the moon" headlines but that's to be expected over here.
Most of the after action reports seem to be highlighting the unknown factor, why didn't it produce visible results as expected? Which is OK imo.
The live coverage I heard on Radio 5 Live here in the UK was bordering on cringeworthy. The women presenter was dismissive, demanding and to be honest, offensive to the on-air expert.
They're like that with any thing to do with science - most BBC journalists come from the world of the arts or politics. Coverage of the '99 eclipse was appalling.
From the Facebook page:
LCROSS Lunar Impactor Mission.
The LCROSS science team met on Saturday and Monday to discuss the results and start putting together the story. In addition, further reports came in from the EBOC (Earth Based Observational Campaign). As true to the scientific method, data has been gathered, positive & null results are both valuable. Now is the time for analysis and comparisons with theory to explain the story. The team anticipates to report at the LEAG in Houston coming up in a few weeks and at the AGU in San Francisco in December. Meanwhile, check our mission page http://www.nasa.gov/lcross for the latest updates.
-LCROSS Facebook Team.
Paul Spudis has an interesting take on the potential science at his Air & Space magazine blog:
http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2009/10/12/lcross-a-mission-to-hyperspace/
He was playing devils advocate. If LCROSS turns out dry - then the logical conclusion is to find some other means to explain the Hydrogen reading. The illogical conclusion that may well play out from supporters of the ice hypothesis is that it hit the wrong place and is not a negative. Paul's take on LCROSS is one I share.
Quick disclaimer: I'm not biased towards a wet or dry polar area; let the chips fall where they may based on the evidence.
That said, we need much more data.
This debate strongly reminds me of the view of Mars post-Viking & MPF until the MERs (really, Oppy) & Phoenix: 'dry & rocky everywhere, it's all the same'. This is not a perfect analogy, but the base concept is the same. There seems to be a fundamental human tendency to draw general conclusions based on limited data (call it the 'first impressions' effect?)
Just throwing that out there as a cautionary note. We now return to our regular programming.
One thing I'm not understanding here: why is it so important that the hydrogen has to be present in the form of water to be valuable? These spacecraft are picking up some kind of hydrogen signal. If it's in the form of solar wind deposited hydrogen, then fine. You can roast it out of the rocks and you have your ready made rocket fuel, without the step of having to break it out of the water. If you need water, then just combine the hydrogen with readily available lunar oxygen. And if it's a case of scientific study, well, you just go with whatever is there.
We don't yet know if there is any appreciable water. We do know the hydrogen is there.
But the oxygen is there, too. And there have been lots of studies and pilot projects on how to get it. I still think, that whatever form, suitable seperation techniques would exist to get the hydrogen. Chemically bound to the rocks would be the hardest, but would also seem to be least likely, at least at the poles.
Some more info here:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/10/14/lunar-crash-temperature.html
A lot is being made of wishful thinkers' bias in explaining away any negative water results. Maybe Mars first bias explains the speed with with which some are grasping such negative results -- before they are released.
Interesting article about water on the Moon: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1485/1
In 1978 Russians found water in samples brought back by Luna-24. In 1976 Luna-24 landed in Mare Crisium and drilled a core sample from about 2 m deep in Lunar surface. Their article "Water in the regolith of Mare Crisium (Luna-24)" was published in a Russian publication Geokhiimia but seems to have gone ignored.
Here's a link to the abstract: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978Geokh......285A
Entire post of blue-sky engineering culled. See rules. - ADMIN
Not really - they had the same findings from Apollo samples. Everyone thought it was contamination.
Phil
So instead of doing the hard science to find out whether the results were contaminated, everyone just assumed they were. A startling discovery 30 to 35 years ago that would have changed the paradigm for space exploration back then was simply shrugged off as an errant reading, not once but twice from two separate sources and experiments. They simply did not believe the data.
Unfortunately this type of thing is not all that uncommon, just normally a little less dramatic. Pride comes before the fall.
I agree that people may have rejected their findings too quickly, but it wouldn't have 'changed the paradigm'. The amounts we are talking about, a molecule or two thick, will make no difference at all to anything. Only the possible concentrations at the poles have the chance to change the paradigm.
As for the bone dry thing, the lunar surface even with these molucules adhering to it is dryer than any bone. That old conclusion referred to chemically or geologically active water, and it's still true today. The problem here is overhyping of the recent results. Water, yes, but not as we know it, or in any useful amount. LCROSS results may still be different.
Phil
I noticed the depth thing too. That is potentially significant. We won't know for sure one way or another until more exploration is done. A lot of that exploration may depend upon the results from this LCROSS mission. I hope we get it sooner rather than later.
Interesting article from New Scientist.
"Was moon-smashing mission doomed from the start?"
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17991-was-moonsmashing-mission-doomed-from-the-start.html
Part of the problem with the water story is that we are getting inconsistent statements. As I understand it the water is only a few molecules thick on the very surface of the regolith, and much of it leaves the surface when heated during the day, then reforms as the sun sets. That is very little water. Then we have statements about getting a glass of water out of a tonne of regolith - or whatever the specific amount is. I think these are not compatible, and the only way I can reconcile them is to say that the tonne of regolith is not dug up in one place but scraped in a layer 1 mm thick over a large area. In other words the bulk regolith is 'bone dry' and a very thin surface layer has all the water. I might be wrong here, but I think not. As far as I know the water detected by M3 is not chemically active - not producing clay minerals in significant quantities, for instance. Obviously we need a lot of follow-up studies of this, but it does seem to me that the water story has been exaggerated in the media.
Phil
But now I think we do know that the various probes only claimed to have measured the top mm or so -- I don't see anyone claiming to have proven the H2O was limited to the top mm.
Given a porus medium being subjected to a daily barrage of hydrogen, and knowing how motile hydrogen is, I find it difficult to believe that it wouldn't permeate the regolith to considerable depth. The regolith should be in equilibrium with respect to hydrogen content -- losing as much as it gains in any given day -- but given a slight preference to move down (caused by gravity) plus a tendency of anything very far below the surface to stay put (caused by lower temperatures) I can't see how that equilibrium would be reached with hydrogen limited to just the top mm.
As everyone says, with any luck we'll see some exciting real data in a few months. And perhaps this will excite some interest in lunar rovers with some digging capability.
--Greg
Wanna get the water story of the Moon? Get Oppy from Mars and put her there.
New data and images released today, but still no word on what the spectrometer detected.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/main/LCROSS_impact.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/main/LCROSS_impact_images.html
--Emily
I am sorry but that first image seems to me rather underwhelming.
Can we stop with the "I'm disappointed" and "this is underwhelming" whining already?
If you wanna watch unrealistic fireworks, go watch a Hollywood blockbuster movie or something. LCROSS wasn't done for the awe factor but science returned.
Right! But they better had involved Hollywood which had added quite a bit explosive to make it clear for the public/audience
Btw. Carry along something like a bomb wouldn't that have been better anyway (in terms of getting better signal/measurements) - unless I'm totally wrong.
Quote: "In the coming weeks, the LCROSS team and other observation assets will continue to analyze and verify data collected from the LCROSS impacts. Any new information will undergo the normal scientific review process and will be released as soon as it is available."
I hope this doesn't mean that they will try to sit on any spectroscopic (water / no water) findings until an article has cleared peer review. In the event of a positive finding, I doubt it could be kept secret anyway.
In recent years, the big journals have been pretty good about allowing significant results to be announced in advance of publication. When they've got a concrete result, I'm sure they'll announce it.
--Greg
The first event I'm looking toward where there may be any semi-public discussion of scientific findings will be the next Lunar Exploration and Analysis Group (LEAG) meeting, which is Nov 16-19. All of day 2 (Nov 17) will be devoted to LRO and LCROSS.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/leag2009/
--Emily
error page...page not found. Perhaps it was posted by mistake and quickly taken down.
Edit: or was it just a bad link you posted?
Remove the ) from the end of the URL.
Edit: Corrected now.
http://www.roscosmos.ru/NewsDoSele.asp?NEWSID=7818
Translating: The LCROSS failure was predicted even before the start of the mission
Several lunar scientists announced that the failure of LCROSS had been predicted even before the start of the mission. (It's not about a technical failure, but about public disappointment)
New Scientist journal cites scientists who have predicted the unfortunate end of the mission in august 2009. One of them is Peter Schultz. According to him the quantity of the impact ejecta was overemphasized. Peter says that the angle of the plume was calculated incorrectly. It was estimated it would be 45 degrees, but Schultz received a 30-degree result.
The camera's imaged the crater right ? but so far it's only a few pixels on the whole field of view. I was under the impression we would see a crater of many many pixels, like we see from LRO, or was that my misconception ?
Half way down this page:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/main/LCROSS_impact_images.html
you can see a 2 m/pixel image of the c. 10 m diameter crater. But it's infrared - we are seeing the warm ejecta, not topography. Remember it's in permanent shadow!
But LRO is attempting to use LROC to get the kind of high resolution images you are thinking of. At this point it's not known if it can get good images in permanent shadow. If it does, it would be imaging using light reflected off surrounding hills. It might take several attempts with different lighting to get anything, if it's possible at all.
Phil
http://www.seti.org/csc/lectures
10/21/2009
Special Panel: LCROSS Mission - the first results of the impact
No, they did not divulge the science results, but provided some interesting background information. For example, they made real-time decisions about how to allocate the limited telemetry bandwidth, favoring scientifically valuable spectroscopy over "pretty pictures." Video of the talk is (or will be) available on Youtube.
Manned spaceflight reference redacted - ADMIN
Did any UK members watch The Sky at Night last night?
A Special program about LCROSS. While chatting to Patrick back in the UK Chris Lintott seemed to hint, based on his interview with the LCROSS PI, that we might hear some very interesting results quite soon - implying they had detected water.
Yes.
And what did you make of Chris Lintotts's remarks to Patrick? I thought he was making it quite obvious that LCROSS had found water in the plume/ejecta.
You may be right but I didn't draw that inference whilst watching it. I assumed the programme was recorded a while ago.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/68841092.html
Some hint of a result from LRO observation of the impact site.
Although they didn't show any trace of the impact, are the Hubble observations of the impact site likely to make into the PDS?
Hubble data isn't archived at the PDS since its main purpose isn't planetary science. The data can be accessed http://archive.eso.org/archive/hst/search/#Q-S+R-+D- among other places. The LCROSS impact observations are already there. Judging by the preview images, there's nothing to see from the imaging standpoint.
Just wondering what the limb of the Moon looked like from Hubble
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