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From: Stig Agermose <stig.agermose@get2net.dk>
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 10:11:57
Fwd Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1999 14:42:16 -0400
Subject: Spacecraft To Crash On Moon, Searching For Water


Source: The Sacramento Bee via the Nando Times,

http://www.nandotimes.com/noframes/story/0,2107,74103-117124-830868-0,00.html

Stig

***

Project will try to crash spacecaft on moon, searching for water

Copyright ©1999 Nando Media
Copyright ©1999 Scripps McClatchy Western Service

By EDIE LAU

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Thirty years ago, humans landed on the moon
with bouncing steps. In a few days, humans will make contact
with the moon again, this time landing with a crash - and
possibly a kind of splash.

The unmanned American spacecraft Lunar Prospector, which has
been studying the moon from orbit for the past 18 months, will
end its mission Saturday by bashing into the cratered rock,
moving a mile a second.

Scientists working on the mission designed this odd mission to
try to raise water vapor from ice deposits they suspect are
hidden in a lunar south-pole crater never warmed by the sun.
Crashing the unmanned craft successfully is a long shot, they
acknowledge, but eminently worth trying.

"I'm an avid science fiction reader, and if there's water there,
I can see how that can (July 26, 1999 12:03 a.m. EDT
http://www.nandotimes.com) exploring the solar system and beyond
- for supplying rockets with fuel ... for a moon base," said
David Goldstein, a University of Texas engineering professor who
designed the smash landing. "I certainly do hope there's water
there."

Early in Lunar Prospector's life, the little orbiter shaped like
a soup can turned up compelling evidence of frozen water in
permanently shadowed craters at the moon's north and south
poles. Scientists on the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration project said in March 1998 that the craft had
detected telling levels of hydrogen, the element that, with
oxygen, makes water. The water is thought to have been left by
past comet collisions.

While hydrogen is a strong sign of water, it's not proof
positive. Other, less likely, possibilities are that pure
hydrogen blew in on solar winds, or that hydrogen atoms alone
cling to grains of lunar soil, Goldstein said.

By dashing the 350-pound spacecraft into a target crater, the
scientists hope to detect water itself in the resulting spray of
dust and debris. And if not water, they hope to find a chemical
relative called hydroxyl, which is formed when ultraviolet
radiation disassembles a water molecule.

But signs of water vapor won't end all doubts. Two Stanford
University scientists say the elements of water could be locked
away in a cementlike paste. And a well-placed collision could
generate vapor from the paste, they argue.

"The attempt may provide, at best, ambiguous results," wrote Von
Eshleman and George Parks in a letter published Friday the
journal Science.

In an interview, Eshleman said it would be possible to extract
water from such paste, just as it is possible to bake water out
of pavement, given sufficient heat. "But it's not nearly as
convenient as if it's ice," he said.

Anyway, the likelihood of seeing water or hydroxyl is only 10
percent, by the reckoning of Goldstein and Alan Binder, Lunar
Prospector chief scientist. Odds are against smacking the moon
just right.

First, the spacecraft might lack the battery power or rocket
fuel to survive until the appointed day. Binder said the craft
was not designed to survive a partial lunar eclipse Wednesday,
when the orbiter's solar-powered instruments will be in darkness
for 3 1/2 hours, four times longer than usual.

The orbiter also may run out of hydrazine, the fuel that enables
operators to tweak the craft's position.

Assuming Lunar Prospector is still flying and communicating with
controllers at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, at
2:52 a.m. Saturday, the spacecraft will skirt the crater's rim,
rushing into a frigid blackness with the energy of a two-ton
pickup rolling at 1,100 mph.

Goldstein, who was 7 when astronauts stepped on the moon, has
taken a fair amount of ribbing for engineering a crash. "I've
been told that's every kid's dream: Let's take this expensive
$63 million rocket and pound it into the moon," he said.

Making it pound to produce water, though, is not kid's play. The
crater is 2 1/2 miles deep and 38 miles across, and the shadowed
zone less than 19 miles in diameter. "That means where we hit,
there could be no water," Binder said.

Too, the spacecraft will approach from a shallow angle of 6 1/2
degrees. A hefty rock in the way could send the craft skittering
in the wrong direction.

Whatever happens, telescopes in Hawaii, Texas and Arizona and in
space, including the Hubble, will be watching.

Scientists widely consider the feat worth trying. "It's a bold
experiment," said Bruce Murray, a planetary geologist at
California Institute of Technology. Murray was one of three
Caltech scientists who in 1961 first postulated that the moon
harbored water in ever- dark craters.

Launched in January 1998, Lunar Prospector is the first
spacecraft in 25 years to look solely at the moon. Besides
hunting for water, it has gathered information on gravity and
magnetic fields and on the quantity and distribution of elements
in the crust.

Binder said scientists may be interpreting the data for decades.
"Just like the Apollo rocks, that's been almost 30 years (since
they were collected) and people are still working on it," he
said.

Those famous rocks have inspired ideas about the way nature
works that no one could have predicted back then.

Paul Spudis, a planetary geologist who analyzed the lunar
samples, said some of the rocks are products of shock melting
and intense pressure caused by asteroid and meteorite
collisions, and possess high levels of iridium, an element
common in meteorites.

On Earth, iridium is rare except in the 65 million-year-old clay
that marks the end of the dinosaur age, called the Cretaceous.
Putting two and two together, some scientists offered what is
now a popular standing theory for dinosaur extinction: an
asteroid did it.

Eager to continue extracting knowledge from the moon, lunar
scientists speak hopefully about sending more explorers there.

Binder himself is raring to go. He's founded two organizations -
one the nonprofit Lunar Research Institute, the other a
spacecraft- making business called Lunar Exploration Inc. He
wants to go personally someday, and says he could be ready to
send an unmanned probe in three years, given the funding.

His goal is to fetch more rocks. "Remember, the moon's a big
place," Binder said. "There are NASA documents with 50 different
sampling sites to start off with. All this has been laid out for
25 years. I'm just ready to do it."


Edie Lau writes for the Sacramento Bee.

Copyright ©1999 Nando Media