A Smashing Idea: Will Impact Moon, Look For Ice In Debris

NASA announced Monday the agency, in collaboration with California's Ames Research Center, will launch a probe called the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite towards the moon in 2008. The probe and its mothership are scheduled to be carried aloft in October 2008.

Once in lunar orbit, the spacecraft will launch an SUV-sized probe towards the surface -- which will then crash into the moon's south pole. The resulting blast -- which, the Mercury News reportsm, should be visible from Earth through a telescope -- will result in a hole about a third of the size of a football field, hurling 2.2 million pounds of debris into space.

The mothership will then fly through the resulting debris field, looking for water ice or water vapor -- much like NASA's Deep Impact mission did last July. Scientists hope trace amounts of water will be present, possibly hinting at more evidence of water underneath the moon's surface -- which would make establishing a base on the moon a more realistic ambition.

"Establishing research stations on the moon will give us the experience and capabilities to extend to Mars and beyond," said Ames' robotics deputy program manager, Butler Hine, in a press release. Should ice be found, Hines added, it could be used to help make rocket fuel or oxygen.

While smashing a probe into the lunar surface may seem an inelegant scientific method, it is grounded in solid science, as evidenced by NASA's similar Deep Impact mission to the comet Tempel 1.

In fact, NASA has a history of, well, crashing probes into the moon. In preparation for manned moon missions later in the decade, NASA sent nine Ranger probes to the moon in the 1960s. Only three of those were successful, however -- sending back close-up pictures of the lunar surface before they impacted.

NASA's Lunar Prospector in 1999 also collided into the moon, but it was considered a disappointment because it failed to kick up a debris cloud for analysis.

To date, several robotic probes have found elevated levels of hydrogen around the moon's poles, which suggest ice might lie beneath the surface. So far, however, the probes failed to find vast expanses of water there.

FMI: www.nasa.gov