BTW, those are these:
Confirm the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed region on the Moon
Identify the form/state of hydrogen observed by at the lunar poles
Quantify, if present, the amount of water in the lunar regolith, with respect to hydrogen concentrations
Characterize the lunar regolith within a permanently shadowed crater on the Moon

The middle ones do hinge on them not declaring that they chose the wrong spot, and concluding that other spots are different.

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/m...act_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

Wouldn't the impact flash produce enough visible light to light up a wide area of Cabeus? Or is it the case that the impact spot was so profoundly cold, that it was only heated up to, say, room temperature? Not white-hot, in common terminology? Or maybe the following spacecraft was just unlucky enough that none of the frames coincided with a very short visible flash?

That sounds like the safe bet. Doubt that the flash proper lasted more than a few milliseconds at best.

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.

The video of that SETI Institute colloquium is now up on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/setiinstitute

Special Panel Presentation and Discussion with Tony Colaprete, Jennifer Heldmann and Diane Wooden.

Anyone?

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.

LOL How could you not have... he all but said they had found it lol.