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Results tagged “india” from Breaking Orbit

NASA Crashes the Moon Tomorrow Morning

Posted on October 8, 2009 | 1 Comments

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By James Robertson, National Geographic Digital Media

One of the coolest-sounding missions launched by NASA comes to an explosive end tomorrow morning.  The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (or LCROSS) will smash into the moon at about 4:30 a.m. PST (7:30 a.m. EST), followed by another impact four minutes later. (Read the National Geographic News preview NASA Moon "Bombings" Tomorrow: Sky Show, Water Expected.)

The first stage of the LCROSS is designed to kick up a huge plume of dust in the permanently dark Cabeus crater at the south pole of the moon. The second stage contains scientific equipment to collect the dust and determine if it contains water ice, before crashing into the moon itself and causing a purely gratuitous explosion. 

According to the mission's NASA page, amateur astronomers with a 10 to 12-inch telescope should be able to see the dust plumes created by the impacts.

If you don't have a telescope, you can watch the camera footage from the satellite and mission control at the Newseum in Washington, DC, at a special watch party on their 40-foot high video wall, at other locations around the world, or on the Internet at http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html.

You will also be able to watch video and read about the mission afterward on National Geographic News.

If water ice is found in the dust, it would confirm findings of water and hydroxyl molecules by NASA instruments aboard the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft launched about a year ago.

Disclosure: James Robertson is a consultant for the Newseum.


One of These Days, Chandrayaan ...

Posted on October 21, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Bang! Zoom! Straight to tha moon!

That's what officials at the Indian Space Research Organization hope will happen early tomorrow, when India sends up its first ever mission to the moon: Chandrayaan-1.

Starting at 5:50 a.m. local Indian time, you can watch a live webcast of Chandrayaan-1 lifting off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Sriharikota, a barrier island that separates Pulicat Lake from the Bay of Bengal (see map).

If all goes as planned, India's lunar orbiter will join probes from Japan and China already circling Earth's only natural satellite.

Japan's Kaguya probe has been making waves since last November with its HD images and movies, but its visual offerings are largely eye candy.

The Kaguya mission's scientific goals are to study the moon's origin, evolution, and geology using a battery of lower-res or nonoptical instruments.

With a few add-ons from NASA, Chandrayaan-1 is expected to use its imagers to create the first hi-res 3-D map of the entire moon's mineral topography.

mineral-map.jpg

http://speclab.cr.usgs.gov/cuprite95.1um_map.tgif.gif
—Image courtesy USGS

The visual results might be more abstract than Kaguya's jaw-dropping HD movies, but they'll reveal a wealth of information about lunar history as well as the locations of any available feedstocks, the resources that could power future lunar bases.

Part of the mineral mapping, for example, will be to look for signs of water ice.

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From dwarf planets to hot Jupiters, join NatGeo News space and tech editor Victoria Jaggard in a global discussion about all things extraterrestrial.


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