NASA will bomb the Moon tomorrow

(Sounds like a Weekly World News headline, don't it? :-)

I'm praying that we will keep having clear skies until later tomorrow, 'cuz at around 7:30 a.m. EDT (and 4:30 in the morning for y'all on the West Coast) NASA's LCROSS mission will literally "shoot the Moon".

LCROSS - short for "Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite -is looking for frozen water and other potentially cool stuff (no pun intended) that might be lurking in the shadows of Luna.  Tomorrow morning LCROSS will release a heavy projectile probe.  Not long afterward the probe will impact around the crater Cabeus A near the Moon's south pole, and the expectant plume of vapor, dust and debris will be analyzed by the LCROSS main satellite (its orbit will carry it through the hoped-for cloud).

And depending on how much good junk gets kicked up we might be able to see this from Earth!  I'm gonna be outside tomorrow morning with my trusty 3-inch refractor and a good pair of binoculars.  But some are also saying that this might be briefly visible with the naked eye.  If nothing else, NASA TV has a streaming video feed online where you can watch it live wherever you happen to be, and there's also the official NASA page for LCROSS's mission profile.

"To the Moon, Alice! RIGHT TO THE MOON!"

Categories: astronomy, nasa, spaceflight