LCROSS Lunar Impact Options

[climber]

Wanna get the water story of the Moon? Get Oppy from Mars and put her there.

[elakdawalla]

New data and images released today, but still no word on what the spectrometer detected.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/m...OSS_impact.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/m...act_images.html

--Emily

[MahFL]

I am sorry but that first image seems to me rather underwhelming.

[ugordan]

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.

[centsworth_II]

Can we stop with the "I'm disappointed" and "this is underwhelming" whining already?

Bravo!
That "underwhelming" image is the first solid indication that LCROSS may meet all it's science goals. What more do you want from a science mission!?

I resisted the temptation to post first after Emily because I wanted to allow time for the naysayers to repent on their own terms. That worked out well.

[Tman]

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.

[tanjent]

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.

[Greg Hullender]

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

[elakdawalla]

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

[John Copella]

"There is a clear indication of a plume of vapor and fine debris," said Colaprete.

Significant?

[glennwsmith]

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.

The point being that disappointment with the size of the plume does not equate to naysaying regarding the entire mission. I am now as ready as anyone to be pleasantly surprised by the spectroscopic results!

[elakdawalla]

Significant?

It just means that stuff is in a gas phase instead of being dust. A vapor of what, is the question.

--Emily

[siravan]

New data and images released today, but still no word on what the spectrometer detected.

I found the total radiance graph http://www.nasa.gov/394533main_VSP-NSP-total-radiance.png very interesting. It seems that there is a drop in mid IR radiance in the first few seconds after the impact. Water has a very high absorbance in mid IR and I wonder whether this graph has a water signiture. Does anyone know how dust would behave?

[MarsIsImportant]

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?

[SFJCody]

Remove the ) from the end of the URL.



Edit: Corrected now.