Lunar bombing a smash hit

WASHINGTON: Earthlings are having a blast – at the expense of the silent Moon. The US space agency Nasa on Friday deliberately crashed a rocket

into planet earth’s nearest celestial - and revered - neighbor in an effort to expand the search for water on the Moon. Nasa said the rocket and satellite strike was a success, kicking up enough dust for scientists to determine whether or not there is water on the moon.

“We have the data we need to address the questions we set out to address”, said Anthony Colaprete, principal investigator for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission. At approximately 5.31pm IST on Friday, a rocket called LCROSS (for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite), traveling at over twice the speed of a bullet, traversed the nearly 375,000 km from earth to Moon and slammed into the bottom of a lunar crater bathed in a permanent shadow.

The impact is said to have created 13 feet deep, 65 feet wide hole and excavated about 350 metric tons of Moon debris, some of it flying up. Trailing four minutes behind, instruments aboard the second piece of the rocket analyzed the rising plume and sent its observations back to Earth before it also slammed into the same crater.

The “double smack,’’ as one report called it, was primarily aimed at ferreting out any hidden ice - and therefore water - on the Moon beyond the traces thought to exist. If there are significant amounts, then it changes the whole ball game of Moon exploration since presence of H²O means life giving oxygen and fuel-potential hydrogen, both of which mankind carries from earth now when it visits the Moon.

An icy Moon could facilitate a moon base, allowing a host of activity from growing food in pressurized green houses to a whole lot of workaday chores. But scientists concede it is also possible that the first major water-specific probe could have easily missed a pocket of ice – or that the theory is wrong and there isn’t large amount of ice on the moon after all.

The much-hyped crash landing was a bit of an anti-climax as it did not live up to the spectacular visual space aficionados had expected based on the animation.