Money well spent? - Page 3

Periklês · 17-10-09, 18:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by First Lady Supertonic

Nasa carries out £49million 'bombing raid' on Moon to find water ... but where was the flash?

It was billed as one of the most ambitious missions in the history of space exploration.

But Nasa's audacious attempt to smash two spacecraft into the surface of Moon in the search for water turned into a damp squib for millions of people today.
The £49million 'bombing raid' was supposed to create a six-mile high cloud of dust that would be visible from telescopes on the Earth.

This pathetic piece of 'journalism' looks even worse today after preliminary reports from NASA indicate that the impact and dust cloud were indeed seen. The dust cloud was visible from spacecraft, but not from the Earth, because the impact was inside a crater, and a mountain range hid the event from Earth telescopes. (Near a pole of the moon, so from earth you are looking roughly along the surface of the moon. The dust cloud was within predicted limits, but not high enough to be seen over the top of the mountain range.)

Report here

Periklês · 13-11-09, 20:06

First analysis of the data from the 'bombing' of the moon suggests that there is ice in places on the moon which are permanently in darkness.

BBC

NASA have described the experiment as a huge success. (OK, they would wouldn't they? But they are probably right) The presence of water on the moon is of major significance for the prospect of future space travel. So much for the pathetic sensationalist attempt by the Daily Mail to claim the whole thing was a flop, just because nothing much was seen during the impact.