Moon crash plume visible to spacecraft

The image of impact plume of "moon bombing" by NASA.

In my previous blog posts Moon bombing to probe water and Was NASA moon bombing a success i told you about "moon bombing" by NASA .

NASA had said that observers from Earth will be able to see the plume of " Moon bombing'' with their telescopes but no one was able to see that from Earth.

Acoording to NASA nine instruments on board the LCROSS spacecraft captured the entire crash sequence of the Centaur impactor before the spacecraft itself impacted the surface of the moon.

From images and data, the team was able to determine the extent of the plume at 15 seconds after impact was approximately 6-8 km in diameter. The data which which the spacecraft has gathered is of high quality.

New map shines light on Moon’s shadowed craters

A new high resolution map of the Moon’s rugged south pole region provides new and unprecedented detail of permanently shadowed craters that could be hiding water ice deposits.



The discovery of water ice reservoirs on the Moon would be a significant step to the future of maintaining a long-term human presence on the Moon.



The map was compiled using data from the Deep Space Network’s Goldstone Solar System Radar, which, in a two and a half second round trip, uses a 70 metre dish to send radar signals to the Moon that are reflected back and detected by two 34 metre antennas.



LCROSS launched Thursday evening and along with its attached Centaur upper stage rocket will separately collide with the Moon, throwing up a pair of debris plumes which will be analysed for the presence of water ice or water vapour, hydrocarbons and other hydrated material.



Together with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which also launched yesterday and will create further detailed maps of the lunar surface, NASA will be well-equipped for human exploration of the lunar south pole.