December 18, 2018
A Final Pre-Impact View & an Update!
Originally published October 9, 2009
image by Pete Lawrence
FRIDAY AM: LCROSS successfully impacted the Moon 30 minutes ago - first science results should be available at 10 AM EST. Congratulations to the LCROSS team! Were there any ground observations of a plume?
What do we chose for LPOD the night before the biggest impact in lunar history? Ten hours before the first data from the impact of LCROSS there is nothing new to say about that event. We can talk about how many impacts there have been since the first one, Luna 2 on Sept 13, 1959. Jonathan McDowell"s web page lists 30 impacts of spacecraft and rockets thru Hiten in 1993. There doesn't seem to be a comprehensive list since then but the main additions are Lunar Prospector, SMART-1, Chandrayaan-1 and its Moon Impact Probe (MIP), Chang'e-1, and Kaguya and its two subsatellites. By the time most people read this on Friday, there will be two more, the LRO Centaur and the LCROSS itself. A trivia question is which lunar orbiter (besides LRO) did not impact the Moon?
See bottom of image
Rükl plate 73
Yesterday's LPOD: The Enemy of Understanding
Tomorrow's LPOD: Not LCROSS