NASA Lunar Probe Creates New Crater; Scientists Look for Water

October 11, 2009 (LPAC)—Following the early Friday morning crash yesterday, of a Centaur rocket into the south-polar, permanently shadowed Cabeus crater on the Moon, scientists reported that they saw a new crater, and the shepherding LCROSS spacecraft recorded a flash of light from the impact. Principal investigator Tony Colaprete explained at a post-impact briefing that while the plume of debris was not visible, as they had hoped, it may be due to the fact that it was ejected at an unexpected angle, or had not risen high enough to be seen by orbiting spacecraft or Earth observers. The crater created by the impact was, as scientists had predicted, about 66 feet, or 20 meters, wide.

Colaprete also reported that while no obvious sign of a debris cloud had been confirmed, non-visible spectral measurements taken by the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, which itself crashed into the Moon four minutes later, indicated a cloud of ejected lunar soil was created. Scientists, hoping to find the chemical signature for water, will spend the next few weeks carefully analyzing the data.

This experiment is the latest in a series of lunar missions, carried out over the past couple of years by Europe, Japan, China, and India. Combined results from those missions now present us with a wide swath of the Moon that is not completely devoid of water ice, and does involve dynamic processes, where water migrates from lower latitudes to the poles. One mystery now to be solved is where the lunar water comes from, and how it changes over time. A more precise inventory of how much water ice there is on the Moon will help determine what contribution the Moon itself can make to providing life-sustaining water for coming explorers.

China and India are now preparing their follow-on Chang'e-2 and Chandrayaan-2 missions, to land spacecraft on the surface, for prospecting. Overall, these precursor spacecraft to the Moon will lay the basis for the next decade's manned missions, the industrial development of the Moon, and a stepping stone to Mars. That is, if we as a nation solve the present existential economic crisis, and commit our selves again to a real focus on industrial and scientific progress in cooperation with other leading nations, as is LaRouche's 4-Powers program.