NASA has
bold and visionary plans to send humans to the Moon by 2020 where humans will
learn to live and work on another planetary body in our Solar System. Sending
people to the Moon isn't easy, though, and there is a lot that we still don't
know about our closest celestial neighbor. That makes it tough to plan a human
mission to the Moon because unlike during the Apollo program of the 1960s, this
time we are going to the Moon to stay for a longer period of time.
The goal is
to learn to live and work on the Moon and then take all of the "lessons
learned" from this experience so we can then send humans to Mars by 2030. Mars
is an incredibly fascinating planet but is much further away from the Earth
compared with the Moon, so NASA plans to use the Moon as a "stepping stone" to
Mars.
Before we
can build a lunar base, though, there are a few important decisions regarding
the mission architecture that need to be made. One of those decisions involves
resource utilization. Should we use the natural resources that are on the Moon
to "live off the land"? If so, what are the resources that might be available
on the Moon? One idea is that there may be water ice in the permanently
shadowed regions near the poles of the Moon.
It is VERY
cold in these places and ice may be stable there for billions of years. There
is tantalizing and somewhat contradictory data regarding the presence of lunar
ice from the Clementine and Lunar Prospector missions to the Moon as well as
data from the Arecibo radio telescope and numerical modeling efforts. Water
could potentially be used by the astronauts for drinking and bathing but can
also be broken apart into hydrogen and oxygen which can be used for rocket
fuel. NASA really needs to know if there is lunar water that we might be able
to use - and to help answer that question, NASA is going to slam a rocket into
the Moon!
The Lunar
Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will purposely impact the
Moon near the pole to kick up a huge plume of material. This will be analyzed
for the presence of water and other water-bearing compounds. The LCROSS
mission will use the spent Earth departure upper stage (EDUS) of the launch
vehicle and a small shepherding satellite to guide the EDUS to the Moon. LCROSS
will blast the permanently dark floor of one of the Moon's polar craters with
the EDUS early in 2009 to test the theory that ancient ice lies buried there.
The EDUS is
essentially the size of a large sport utility vehicle (SUV) and will impact the
Moon at over 5,600 miles per hour! This event will excavate a new crater on
the Moon the size of 1/3 of a football field and 16 feet deep. The impact will
cause an explosion of material from the crater's surface to create a plume
above the lunar surface (reaching to altitudes of over 30 miles) with enough
material to fill the space shuttle cargo bay 10 times!
Specialized
instruments aboard the shepherding spacecraft will analyze this plume for the
presence of water (ice and vapor), hydrocarbons and hydrated materials and will
relay this data back to Earth. Then the shepherding spacecraft will also
impact the Moon to create a second plume. Telescopes all around the world and
in space will also be pointed at the LCROSS impacts, each with special
instruments to monitor the gigantic lunar plumes of material that are ejected
above the lunar surface. The impacts will be so big that you will be able to
observe them with reasonable grade amateur telescopes.
This
exciting mission is being run out of NASA's Ames Research Center in California
in cooperation with its spacecraft and integration partner, Northrup-Grumman.
LCROSS represents one of NASA's first missions in the return to the Moon and
will provide valuable precursor information as we plan to return humans to the
lunar surface.
More
information about the LCROSS mission can be found at http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov.
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