SMART-1 impact, September 2006 Options

[Phil Stooke]

Well, unfortunately the Clementine LWIR image strips don't cover the nominal impact point. Here is a mosaic of four orbits, containing all the images in the area. The nominal impact point is right in the middle, between the two strips. Each strip is a composite of two orbits. This can be compared with the new AMIE mosaic to see where the strips lie.

LWIR images are difficult to process but give very nice views of the surface, as long as the point you want is covered!

Phil

(PS does anyone else on planet Earth actually use these images?)

[MizarKey]

Does anyone know if there's anywhere on the web broadcasting live via telescope? I'm telescope challenged and was hoping to see the impact..

[GravityWaves]

Does anyone know if there's anywhere on the web broadcasting live via telescope? I'm telescope challenged and was hoping to see the impact..

Spaceflightnow ( www.spaceflightnow.com/news ) says the best phots might come from Amateur astronomers, the guys over at nasaspaceflight were running a live thread with impact images from a webcam inside the ESA controll room.


Still no press release....but they have a lot of info on Europe's pre-impact activities as Smart-1 comes to an end

The ESA website says 'ESA-webportal will publish results as soon as they are available late on 2 September and early on 3 September.'

[ermar]

According to the ESA, the impact took place according to schedule.

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/SMART-1/SEMBY5BVLRE_0.html

[CosmicRocker]

I've been chasing the news, but it has been scarce so far. Apparently an observatory in Hawaii detected a "bright flash," according to this article.

[Jyril]

The CFHT image of the flash is available here.

[dilo]

Thanks, Jyril... I suspect these are the very first published images of the impact.
About the flash, apparently the explosion is big: it's apparent size is 24 pixel (or 7 arcsec) in the outermost part and 9pixel/2.7arcsec in the inner/most luminous (saturated?) region... these numbers correspond to a "hot gas bubble" of 5-12Km diameter. I do not know if these value are "real" because, even if well above instrument resolution (a fraction of arcsec, see here), we do not know the atmospheric conditions and they do not published the FWHM figure... in fact, I suspect that the true moon surface detail are the very blurred (do not considetr the very dark spots or other bright, well defined features probably arising from the sensor) and, based on this, seeing is very bad and SN ratio is high.
Probably, only some convoluted image can tell us real size of the bubble.
Obviously, SMART crater isn't visible (should be less than 1/60 pixel size)

[ugordan]

I suspect the brightness of the flash will be much more useful than measuring its dimensions (which is very dependant on seeing conditions, instrument characteristics and the sort). I wonder if any good spectra were acquired?

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

The impact site would be a good target for the future Lunar Reconaissance orbiter..

[edstrick]

Given the low impact speed, this is *not* a hypervelocity impact. Metal and rock debris leaving the impact crater at high velocity will be hot, but probably barely hot enough to glow thermally at visual wavelengths. <I'd like to see a calculation on the maximum kinetic heating possible> There should be some visible flash from remaining hydrazine and maybe shorting batteries and the like.. hard to guess how much.

I'd think a flash would be much more visible at thermal infrared wavelengths.. 5 micrometer or longer. Having an acutal flash dection will pinpoint the impact point better than raw spacecraft L.O.S. timing, I'd presume, and provide a good coordinate for future high and eventually ultra-high imaging.

[hal_9000]

SMART-1 on IFR
http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/News/Smart1/

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[mars loon]

There are some brief reports at the Planetary society website;

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000688/
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000686/ (includes a beautiful mosaic of the impact region from ESA, also at ESA site)

mosaic link:
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/smart_...onAMIEMap_H.jpg

there are about 4. check the weblog for more:

Just As Planned

Sep. 2, 2006 | 23:00 PDT | Sep. 3 06:00 UTC

Weblog Archiveby Jennifer Vaughn

SMART-1 scientist Detlef Koschy confirmed that mission control lost the SMART-1 signal at 10:42:19. He reported that folks at ESOC applauded when the "mission ended just as planned." Team members at ESOC are now downloading final pictures. SMART-1 took images up to about 5 minutes before impact.

We also heard from a group of amateur astronomers who have set up at Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory. They did not observe anything unusual, nor did we see anything here at The Planetary Society. We're still waiting to hear from the worldwide network of observatories to see if an impact blast or ejecta plume was seen.

[Guest_Myran_*]

I can only confirm whats been said, but yes the Swedish Space Corporation have that image up now also with a link to the Canada France Hawaii Telescope.
Someone might wonder what the Swedish Space Corporation got to do with SMART? Well SMART was proposed and designed by SSC, and built by Saab/Ericsson space (Formerly Saab-aerospace) in Linköping Sweden. After completion SMART was handed over to ESA for launch and the daily operations of the mission.

[Phil Stooke]

I was just thinking about how many things have hit or landed on the moon... some we might be uncertain about - are the Soviet orbiters still in orbit, for instance? - Luna 10 was high enough that it may still be in orbit - but making a few assumptions, I think SMART-1 may be the 60th spacecraft to reach the surface. I count 20 Lunas (including upper stages of two of them), five Rangers, seven Surveyors, five Lunar Orbiters, 20 bits of Apollo hardware, Hiten, Prospector and SMART-1. I'm not counting things like the Luna 9 landing stage or the Surveyor main engines, ejected before landing, and I'm not counting Luna 17 and Lunokhod 1 (etc) as two items. So a bit of a fudged list.

Some we can't locate on a map - e.g. the Apollo 16 LM ascent stage or the Apollo 15 subsatellite. I think that 50 could be plotted on a map.

[garybeau]

Not sure if the telescope/camera has the resolution to pick out a crater from the impact, but it sure
looks like there is something visible from the before and after pictures.