SMART Probe to Crash Into the Moon

cyberbian writes "Amateur astronomers will be excited to note that they can witness the impact of the SMART-1 probe crashing into the moon. The impact is scheduled for the morning of September 2nd (PDT). From the article: 'There's nothing wrong with the spacecraft, which is wrapping up a successful 3-year mission to the Moon. SMART-1's main job was to test a European-built ion engine. It worked beautifully, propelling the craft in 2003 on a unique spiral path from Earth to the Moon. From lunar orbit, SMART-1 took thousands of high-resolution pictures and made mineral maps of the Moon's terrain. One of its most important discoveries was a "Peak of Eternal Light," a mountaintop near the Moon's north pole in constant, year-round sunlight. Peaks of Eternal Light are prime real estate for solar-powered Moon bases."

A DUMB probe would have crashed into the Earth

[adnonsense]

The next step is to build a probe which doesn't crash at all ;).

On an entirely more geeky note, I wonder if any of the Apollo ASLEP packages are still up and running and whether they would detect the impact?

Silly question

[Bane1998]

I'm curious, not knowing much about it, so thought I'd post and see if anyone else may know..

They indicated that they don't know which orbit the probe will crash into the moon, so if this thing is orbiting the moon, how do they even know where on the moon it will crash? Couldn't the orbit decay and finally crash on the far side of the moon? i.e. orbit 1.5?

Or is the orbit around the earth? In that case I suppose it might make sense, however again, if they don't know which orbit, couldn't it also come close enough to be thrown off by the gravity of the moon into a different orbit?

Yes, probably idiot questions from a non-astronomer.

Keith

krunk smash!

[gsn]

nonsense - ESA is crashing it deliberately. From the TFA

But now SMART-1 is running low on fuel. It has to come down sometime--and soon--so ESA mission scientists decided to crash it in a place where the crash can be seen from Earth and studied.

You can learn a lot from crashes - how craters form and the composition of the ejecta. Astronomy Krunk style is still useful! Krunk smash! NASA did something similar with the deep impact probe and comet tempel.

Sad thing here is they have no idea how bright its going to be - TFA says anything between 7 and 15 mag (5 mag difference is a factor of 100 in flux) so we may not see anything really.

Re:Real Estate

[phulegart]

the sooner we stop thinking about the moon as some mystical magical pixie home where ancient one-eyed green cheese eating creatures hide from our attempts to photograph them, and start thinking about in terms of real estate with a long-ass trip to the beach.... ... the sooner we will advance off the planet and into our own solar system with any kind of manned progress.

The moon is not a rainforest we have to save so that we can continue to breathe. We should avoid blowing it up, but other than that, it's a big hunk of rock we just haven't put to good use yet.

Must be some new definition of "constant"

[Locke2005]

So, the "Peak of Eternal Light" is never in darkness, 'cause, you know, the Earth never blocks sunlight from reaching it? Those Lunar eclipses must just be a figment of my imagination...

Re:Real Estate

[kfg]

I hate hearing such business-evolved terms such as "real estate"

Real estate is not a business evolved term, in fact it's rather the opposite. It's a fuedalism evolved term.

"Real" means "royal" and "estate" means "status"; real estate is that property, status; held by royal grant, one's condition under the power of the king.

If you don't like the term applied to the moon; go complain to the King of the Moon.

KFG

To quell the critics...

[Beefslaya]

They probably are going to crash it into the moon to prove they were there. :)
 
Now if they only had crashed the lunar modules of Apollo in a spectacular display of exploding moon dust and told people to watch through their telescopes. Then we would have to listen to these dipshit conspiracy theorists talk about us never going there in the first place.
 
Maybe they should have had them wave at us?

Places on Earth to view

[iamlucky13]

So, any ideas as to if any particular location on Earth will have a better show?

From the article (which also has links to tips for backyard astronomers wanting to witness it):

The time to watch: Saturday, September 2nd at 10:41 p.m. PDT (Sept. 3rd, 0541 UT)...The nominal impact time favors observers in western parts of North America and across the Pacific Ocean.

10:41 PM on the west coast or 1:41 AM on the east coast. It will probably have set or be setting at that time on the east coast, and the twilight will probably still be too bright in Hawaii. There's also a nice graphic showing the location of impact with a quarter moon. The impact will be in the shadowed half, making it easier to spot, but they're unsure exactly what brightness to expect. It could be as bright as magnitude 7 (theoretically visible with binoculars, IIRC) or as dim as magnitude 15, in which case it's doubtful anyone will see it. There is also a small chance that their estimates are a little off, in which case it may hit one orbit early or miss and hit one orbit late, so the time is really +/- 5 hours.

Re:Real Estate

[MP3Chuck]

"go complain to the King of the Moon.

He's a little ... preoccupied [weebls-stuff.com].

lunacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Now how come they didnt decide to crash it into the poles to see if it could kick up some water vapor.

after all, Lunar Prospector tried and failed, so this would be a chance to try again, right?

why scientifically sterile target location?... when we could actually use it to do some science