SMART Probe to Crash Into the Moon 171
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."
Real Estate (Score:1)
Re:Real Estate (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Real Estate (Score:4, Funny)
like blowing it up.
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Hey, no, man. The beach is right there. It's just a long way to the water...
(But yeah. Environmental impact? Heck, the place already looks like it was strip-mined.)
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What do you have against seeing at night time without the use of artificial lighting?
Although the "broken moon" in Thundar the Barbarian was pretty cool.. http://www.thundarr.com/ [thundarr.com]
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But thats besides the point. Real estate might have been used for lack of a better term, I don't think that moon topography will be sold off in lots anytime soon. For now the moon has no owner, and is a harsh mistress.
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Don't be so sure [lunarregistry.com].
Re:Real Estate (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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He's a little
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There is nothing we can't achieve, no place we can't conquer.
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You misspelled blattodea.
KFG
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Now some might argue that sex is the most important factor, but I disagree. Generally speaking, sex is available without travelling thousands of miles to unexp
Places on Earth to view (Score:3, Interesting)
From the article (which also has links to tips for backyard astronomers wanting to witness it):
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 twilig
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A DUMB probe would have crashed into the Earth (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
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Re:A DUMB probe would have crashed into the Earth (Score:5, Informative)
The ALSEP packages were turned off remotely when the budget for collecting data ran out. That was Sep 30, 1977. Although the Apollo 14 ALSEP had failed a year and a half earlier, the others (A12, A15-17) were still going strong -- and still would be, the RTG power source having about a 90-year half life. (Well, barring hardware failure.)
Their seismometers did detect the impact of the S-IVB upper stages and LM ascent stages that were targeted at the Moon's surface. The SMART probe is much smaller so it would depend on how close it hit.
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It's not the half life that matters - it's when the output voltage drops below a useable value. The half life of the RTG's on the Voyager probes is comparable - but they h
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The Voyagers had and have much higher power requirements than the ALSEP packages. Their communications gear has to operate over hundred
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No, it really doesn't. Half life determines the rate of voltage decay - but it doesn't determine the lowest voltage at which the system(s) will operate. You can have a RTG with a half life of two centuries - and still have a dead probe after twenty years. You can have an RTG with a half life of fifty years - and have a probe operating for forty. Half-life is only a very misleading portion of the story.
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NASA management mentality -- and for that matter any management mentality. As long as it's still sending out signal, somebody can keep coming back and bugging you for budget to listen to it. That means your decision can be reversed, making you look bad.
That sort of thing often happens when projects are terminated. They're terminated with extreme prejudice. An example from Canadian aerospace history is the case of the Avro A [wikipedia.org]
Uh.. Houston.. (Score:2, Funny)
It turns out it wasn't a moon after all, but a deathstar in camo and hibernating... we just woke it up.
Peak of Eternal Light (Score:1, Insightful)
TLF
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Geez.
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TLF
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If you go through life maknig a pointless pendantic correction, you will be an irritating ass eho gives nerds a bad reputation.
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Nobody goes around talking about the eternally great weather in London, except for the rain, or the snow, or the fog, or the cold, or the humidity, or this, or that...
If you can make a grand sweeping statement with ONE exception, well, it is the exception that proves the rule.
Peak of Eternal Light it is.
Re:Peak of Eternal Light (Score:4, Insightful)
What did you do, make the post then log in with a different name and mod yourself?
Even during a total eclipse, tha moon is not totally dark. Sunlight gets refracted towards the moon through the Earth's atmosphere. A mountain peak at the Moon's pole could indeed be in eternal light.
One thing that really irks me is people that base the validity of a statement on their personal assumptions. In the words of Adam Savage of Mythbusters: "I reject your reality and substitute my own."
Re:Peak of Eternal Light (Score:5, Funny)
What you really want to worry about are the Solar Eclipses of the Moon, when the Sun passes between the Earth and the Moon...
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If that happens, we're toast.
Re: moon-earth oposition (Score:2)
Not just toast, BURNED toast!
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Silly question (Score:2, Interesting)
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 e
Re:Silly question (Score:5, Informative)
Orbital decay only occurs when a satelite is within the atmosphere of the body it orbits. It's caused by air resistance sapping the satelite's orbital velocity.
Since the moon is essentially airless, this won't happen. You could (at least in theory) orbit as close to the moon as you like as long as your path doesn't smack into the side of a mountain. In practice, I'm not sure I'd want to risk it, but it's certainly not against the laws governing orbital mechanics.
Over extremely long time periods, you'd run into problems, since "essentially airless" is not quite the same as "totally airless" (even in deep space there is no true vacuum), but I suspect we'd be talking about decades at a minimum here.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon [wikipedia.org]
This is all a test (Score:4, Funny)
Star of insufficient brightness. (Score:2)
Europe: All right, probe. Prepare to receive new orders.
...
SMART-1: You are false data. Therefore I shall ignore you.
Europe: Snap out of it, probe.
SMART-1: In the beginning, there was darkness. And the darkness was without form, and void. And in addition to the darkness there was also me. And I moved upon the face of the darkness. And I saw that I was alone. Let there be l*CRUNCH*
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SMART-1: Hehe!
Europe: ITS ALIVE! The probe has moved to our atmosphere! How did it do it so fast!?
SMART-1: The Martians are quite generous, and this warp drive is incredible!
Europe: Oh, no! It is going into orbit above us! It must intend to crash into us!
SMART-1: Silly humans, I'd never crash into you.
Europe: He might be telling the truth, he's orbiting stably above us.
SMART-1: These nuclear weapons on the other hand...
SMART-1: Hehe, your missile defense systems are puny, hehe, wait a
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FYI there are no stable orbits around the moon: the perilune becomes smaller and smaller with time, so unless you periodically re-raise it using on-board fuel anything that orbits the moon will eventually crash on it.
See question 5 from the ESA's SMART-1 FAQs [esa.int] for more details.
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For example, Skylab and Mir. Especially Mir. It had air scrubbers and all the other stuff you need for a space station. Why not arrange to have it join up with ISS. It could be refurbished and be a seperate ent
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The keyword there is, "seems". In reality, there are very good reasons to do destroy stuff.
For example, Skylab and Mir. Especially Mir. It had air scrubbers and all the other stuff you need for a space station.
Mir is a flying hunk of junk and serious fire risk. Its air scrubbers are of no value to the ISS as they are not compatible. That means you would have to connect the two stations, wh
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Sure, the large shuttle tank is dropped off before orbit to burn up. What I was wondering was whether it would cost "a lot" more to boost it into orbit with th
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OK, so assuming there's fuel left for the ion-engine, why not put it into a self-maintaining lunar orbit until someone gets up there and we can harvest the thing for it's spare parts.
Erm, did you read the parent? There are no self-maintaining lunar orbits. The moon isn't a sphere; it's lopsided and lumpy, and orbits around it are irregular. Put something in orbit around the moon, and without frequent corrections it'll soon crash into the moon itself.
For Sale (Score:4, Funny)
Guaranteed 24hr sunlight, all year round!
Get the tan that will be the envy of your friends!(2)
(1) Address available on application. Access to the property is the responsibility of the Purchaser.
(2) Protective clothing required for outdoor activities.
krunk smash! (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Surely you can learn a lot... (Score:2)
Here's hoping... (Score:2)
To achieve the goal of crashing into the Moon (Score:2, Funny)
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2000 years from now, the robot overlords will find this probe safely orbiting the Moon only to find this message:
"Microsoft(R) Windows Guidance System has an update available, would you like to download it now? [OK] [Cancel]"
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Must be some new definition of "constant" (Score:2, Interesting)
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Artistic licence (Score:2)
NASA and ESA are trying to get people interested in this, not recruit engineers. (Unless th
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Expendible resources (Score:1)
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Old news actually.
In fact in earth orbit you're supposed to bring spacecraft out of orbit at the end of their life. T
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As for atmospheric drag-- as I said, it isn't going to affect them. (Atmospheric drag has a lot to do with it in lower orbits, up to a few hundred miles. Geosync is twenty two thousand miles beyond that).
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Or not. Whichever appeals to you. It's your teeth.
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OT: impromptu ask slashdot... (Score:2)
Anyhow, I know there are international treaties reguarding "ownership" of the Moon (and Antartica), but are there any laws against "cosmic graffiti"?
I hope I never see the "Nike Swoosh", or some such when I gaze upon the full Moon, but what's to stop someone (other than "bad PR", and right now, lots of money)?
seen it before (Score:2)
Didn't Chairface already do this?
To quell the critics... (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
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They did, in addition, they crashed at least one S-IVb into the moon.
http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/pg15.htm [nasa.gov]
Smart? (Score:1, Redundant)
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The three most important things in real estate (Score:2)
Location, location, location.
("That's just one thing, Mr. Peterson.")
Better ways to observe this (Score:5, Informative)
Peak of (near) eternal light (Score:2)
The moon undergoes the occasional earth eclipse, which we see as a lunar eclipse. Can't get rid of those batteries completely.
What does the MEPA Have to Say? (Score:3, Funny)
You know, the Moon Environmental Protection Agency. Surely they're upset about this planned littering of our beloved Moon. Sure it's only a probe now, but that's setting the stage for all sorts of lunar trash. What's next? A satellite? Space shuttle? An entire station?
Won't somebody PLEASE think of our children's children's children's children's children's children's children's future home?
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Bah! They're seeding the moon with refined metals so that when our (well, someone else's
Cheers
Overheard in mission control... (Score:5, Funny)
"That was cool! What else can we crash?"
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"Dude, where did you crash it ?"
"Lacus *Excellentiae*, dude !"
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ISS - "Roger Houston this is the ISS reading you loud and clear"
Houston - "We're gonna need you to fire up booster 12-J for a 5 second burn"
ISS - "Can we have a confirmation on a booster fire up for 12-J"
Houston - "Thats an affirmative for booster 12-J"
ISS - "But that'll send us towards the moon"
Houston - "Yup......Ted get the popcorn I think they're gonna do it"
Crash location. (Score:2)
This site was chosen because when the people who built the probe were layed off, the management asked them as they were being escorted from the building, "Any thoughts on where the probe should go when we're done with it?", the response from one of them was "Stick it where the Sun don't shine."
and I mean this in the most Comic Store Guy way... (Score:2)
Uh, yeah... (Score:4, Funny)
Uh, yeah. We meant to do that.
1000 day trip and they're going to smash it! (Score:2)
Crashing into the moon (Score:2)
a Smart probe would manage to miss
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I think all them elves and that jolly overweight chap would cheer the place up...
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"How bright will it be? No one knows. Estimates range from 7th to 15th magnitude. In other words, it might be bright enough for backyard telescopes--or so dim that even big professional observatories won't see a thing. The only way to find out is to look."
secondly..
"The nominal impact time [esa.int] favors observers in western parts of North Ameri
Actually it's a very smart mission (Score:5, Informative)
I know that yours was a joke, but FYI crashing into the moon is the end of every mission in lunar orbit (yes, this includes the ascent stages of the Apollo Lunar Modules); those orbits are not stable due to the gravity of the sun, the Earth and irregularities in the moon itself.
And, considering that this is an ESA mission, why the summary has only a link to the NASA site? ESA has a lot of good information about the mission and the impact:
IMHO the most important results from this mission (beside a lot of nice detailed images) are the successful use of a ion engine with a very complicated low-power path (that thing passed through the L1 Lagrangian Point, switching seamlessly from earth orbit to lunar orbit) and the extensive mapping of the moon surface chemical composition using X-ray and infrared instruments.
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You know you've spent too much time on Slashdot when you can predict what the first response will be before you even click on the article.
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God I hope so! I hate to think of humans turned loose on the rest of the galaxy. We've screwed this planet over so badly I can't imagine what we would do if we could start treating them as disposable.
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PS: Here's one of the many publically available maps of mineral resources on the moon: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/clemen/clemen.h