European Spacecraft Crashes Into Moon

(AP)  Europe's first spacecraft to the moon ended its three-year mission Sunday with a planned crash on the lunar surface, hitting its target at 1 1/4 miles per second, or 4,475 miles per hour.

The impact, in a volcanic plain called the Lake of Excellence, was captured by observers on earth, and scientists hoped the resulting cloud of dust and debris would provide clues to the geologic composition of the site.

"That's it — we are in the Lake of Excellence," said spacecraft operations chief Octavio Camino as applause broke out in the European Space Agency's mission control center in Darmstadt, Germany. "We have landed."

Minutes later, a video screen on the control room wall showed an image of the bright flash from the impact taken by an infrared telescope and relayed from an observatory in Hawaii.

"It was a great mission and a great success and now it's over," said mission manager Gerhard Schwehm.

During its months in orbit around the moon, the spacecraft scanned the lunar surface from orbit and took high-resolution pictures. But its primary mission was testing a new, efficient, ion propulsion system officials hope to use on future interplanetary missions including the BepiColombo mission to Mercury slated for 2013.

Launched into Earth's orbit by an Ariane-5 booster rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, in September 2003, SMART-1 used its ion engine to slowly raise its orbit over 14 months until the moon's gravity grabbed it.

The engine, which uses electricity from the craft's solar panels to produce a stream of charged particles called ions, generates only small amounts of thrust but only needed 176 pounds of xenon fuel.

The craft's X-ray and infrared spectrometers have gathered information about the moon's geology that scientists hope will advance their knowledge about how the moon's surface evolved and test theories about how the moon came into being.

On Saturday, mission controllers had to raise the craft's orbit by 2,000 feet to avoid hitting a crater rim on final approach. Had the orbit not been raised the craft would have crashed one orbit too soon, making the impact difficult or impossible to observe.

The maneuver had to be carried out quickly in the early hours of Saturday and operations chief Camino admitted that "we were under some stress."

SMART-1, a cube measuring roughly a meter on each side, took the long way to the moon — more than 62 million miles instead of the direct route of 217,000 to 250,000 miles. But ESA did it for a relatively cheap $140 million.

The spacecraft had also been taking high-resolution pictures of the surface with a miniaturized camera, sending back its last close-up images just minutes before the impact.

[Syndicate]

I don't mind my tax dollars going for things like this. I much prefer my dollar go to developing better rocket engines like this Ion drive than to some bum who is to lazy to get a job and pay their electric bill. I think its sad that we have to pay 9 billion a month in Iraq but if we loose the war on terror we will all be living in a stone age muslim world. I prefer the world of tommorow and isn't that what we are fighting for. Why doesn't anyone ever complain about all the trash those little sea cretures leave all over the beach. Theres fish carcusus sea shells sea weed. But no! People only complain about human trash.

[Syndicate]

I don't mind my tax dollars going for things like this. I much prefer my dollar go to developing better rocket engines like this Ion drive than to some bum who is to lazy to get a job and pay their electric bill. I think its sad that we have to pay 9 billion a month in Iraq but if we loose the war on terror we will all be living in a stone age muslim world. I prefer the world of tommorow and isn't that what we are fighting for. Why doesn't anyone ever complain about all the trash those little sea cretures leave all over the beach. Theres fish carcusus sea shells sea weed. But no! People only complain about human trash.

[zykracosmos]

I've read nothing but clutter in these comments about the European moon project. Maybe in the time it takes to type out these comments, perhaps people could have gone to the ESA website and found out more of what the project was about and what scientists can learn from the data received. About the money spent- compare the $140 for real science, jobs and all, against the $9 BILLION a month Bush spends in Iraq. Or on a more relevant comparison, the $80 million he's asked Congress for just to "prepare" Cuba for democracy (sounds like a down payment to Haliburton to me). Whenever you see money spent on real scientific inquiry, which is the hallmark of human progress, you always get whiners that complain that we could have spent it on some poor folks. I'm sorry, but when the global population is allowed to double in 30 years time, poverty will be acute. So, are we to end scientific research for all except profitable discoveries that make corporations more money (pharmaceuticals), or does pure science still have a place with humankind? If not, then humanity has certainly passed its prime, and the rest is all downhill.

[ssaattbb]

Hello, people. They didn't put $140 million into an incinerator and torch it. The $140 million was spent resarching, building, launching and supporting the project for the past several years. This means, the project created JOBS. From the scientists, to the material suppliers, to the people who clean the toilets where the scientists work. We put so much emphasis on educating our chilren(and not just American children, but children in general), and putting them through college to get good jobs in math and science, and technology fields, then when they apply that knowledge and do good work to advance the knowledge base of mankind, and benefit humanity, they get nothing but criticism. SHAME ON YOU ALL.

[shroomofdoom]

Stan: right. And if prehistoric man had been presumptuous enough to spend too -much- time and resource on "research" (including such feats of brave inquisition as throwing his tools and foodstuffs into vast canyons to see how long it takes them to hit the ground, which is the only primitive equivilent of crashing 140 million dollar cubes into the moon that I can come up with) then he would have simply died of hunger and we wouldn't be here.


Now, I'm not saying that we need to solve all our problems on Earth before we can even begin space exploration. If we tried to do that, we would never get around to leaving orbit, and who knows what a loss that might be to humanity in general. It might even lead to our premature extinction.

But omptimal progress relies on a balance of providing for ourselves by the means that we know and risking research to discover superior means of doing so. I some how doubt that we have reached that balance.

[metalcutter1]

A space shot is a research project.

Without research, we would still be living in caves and trying to survive famine.

Get over it.

Regards,

Stan-

[nothappyatall]

"But ESA did it for a relatively cheap $140 million. "

Funny, you read about the 9 people killed in an apartment fire in Chicago just now because their electric was shut off a month ago and they've been using CANDLES for light because there's no aid. Then you read about squandering a "cheap" $140 million on a toy to crash into the moon and you have to wonder why we are so phuxed up as a society.

[rtw88]

So we've gone beyond leaving garbage all over the Earth - now we have to crash land our space junk on another planetary object. The moon has now officially become the first off site landfill for Planet Earth.