Official News - page 7

REAL LIFE NEWS: MOON PROBE DUE TO CRASH LAND

by Hazed

As I write this article on Saturday, the European spacecraft Smart 1 is heading towards a catastrophic meeting with the Moon. It's going to crash onto our satellite at a speed of 4,500 mph in the early hours of Sunday morning. But unlike various missions to Mars which have accidentally crashed and burned, this time, the crash is deliberate.

Scientists hope the crash will reveal the rock beneath the moon's surface, and they will be watching closely - professional and amateur telescopes will be trained on the crash site. The robotic craft should come down on the nearside at mid-southern latitudes, in an area called the Lake of Excellence, and at that impact speed, even if it strikes a glancing blow of just one degree to the surface, it should meet a sufficiently violent end that astronomers can follow the event from Earth. Telescopes will, it is hoped, be able to see the lunar soil, or regolith, kicked up in the crash; they may even detect a thermal flash as volatile materials on the probe melt some of its structure.

Well, that's the plan, and by the time you read this we will know whether it crashed successfully or not. (I'm not sure what an unsuccessful crash would be... if it touched down gently? Or missed the moon altogether?)

Stop press:

Smart 1 did crash into the moon as planned this morning. Read a report on the BBC news website. There's a simulated video, plus some of the pictures Smart 1 took before its final touchdown, on the European Space Agency website.

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