LCROSS Impact Data Indicates Water on Moon

LCROSS Impact Data Indicates Water on Moon
11.13.09


NASA today opened a new chapter in our understanding of the moon. Preliminary data from the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates that the mission successfully uncovered water during the Oct. 9, 2009 impacts into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus cater near the moon’s south pole.

LCROSS was launched June 18, 2009 as a companion mission to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After separating from LRO, the LCROSS spacecraft held onto the spent Centaur upper stage rocket of the launch vehicle, executed a lunar swingby and entered into a series of long looping orbits around the Earth.

After traveling approximately 113 days and nearly 5.6 million miles (9 million km), the Centaur and LCROSS separated on final approach to the moon. Traveling as fast as a speeding bullet, the Centaur impacted the lunar surface shortly after 4:31 a.m. PDT Oct. 9 with LCROSS watching with its onboard instruments. Approximately four minutes of data was collected before the LCROSS itself impacted the lunar surface.


What other secrets will the moon reveal? The analysis continues!

Mr. Adams Students to Participate in Moon Mission

Mr. Adams has been selected as one of 25 teachers to learn how to operate the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope remotely from the classroom. Mr. Adams completed the first phase of his training on February 28th at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View. During this training he used the radio telescope to get measurements from a quasar over 14 billion light years from Earth, tracked and computed the path of the ACE satellite using the Doppler Effect, and measure the temperature of the atmosphere of Jupiter. Completing this training will allow students in his classrooms to access several of the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescopes to do ongoing research on Jupiter, Uranus, and a number of distant Quasars. Students will use laptops from the BUSD EETT Grant to control the giant radio telescopes by entering a fer numbers and with just the click of a mouse.  We will also participate in several upcoming NASA Missions. The first of these missions, the Lunar LCROSS Probe looking for water on the Moon is scheduled to launch May 24th with an impact on the Moon in late August or early September. Students will be "caretakers" of this probe, making sure that it is "healthy" and "on course." NASA's budget has NASA scientists checking on the probe every third day, with students in the classroom responsible to monitor it the other days. For more information about the NASA LCROSS Mission click on the NASA LCROSS line below in the "links to check out" section of this blog. For more information on the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescopes click on the Goldstone Apple Vallley Radio Telescopes link in the same section below. Future NASA missions that include our involvement include the Juno Program scheduled for liftoff next year. This mission will be to study Jupiter, and our students will be doing part of the research to answer several questions, inclucing "How deep does the layer of Jupiter that has "weather" go? What is the core of Jupiter like? Is it a solid core or not? For LCROSS countdown check the NASA launch "countdown clock" to the right of this window, and go to the NASA link below for information on future NASA launches.