Moon Shot Complete; Search on for Water

(CBS/ AP)  Updated at 11:46 a.m. EASTERN

NASA smacked two spacecraft into the lunar south pole Friday morning in a search for hidden ice. Instruments confirm that a large empty rocket hull barreled into the moon at 7:31 a.m., followed four minutes later by a probe with cameras taking pictures of the first crash. The space probe is called LCROSS, short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.

The mission, in part, aims to "go somewhere the sunlight never reaches," CBS News space consultant Bill Harwood said.

By studying data collected by LCROSS, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Hubble Space Telescope and observatories on Earth, scientists hope to determine if there is ice in the moon's soil.

"Nobody's going to be mining ice on the moon anytime soon," Harwood cautioned.

But the big live public splash people anticipated didn't quite happen. Screens got fuzz and no immediate pictures of the crash or the six-mile plume of lunar dust that the mission was all about. The public, which followed the crashes on the Internet and at observatories, seemed puzzled.

NASA officials touted loads of data from the probe and telescopes around the world and in orbit. But most of the photos they showed during a Friday morning press conference were from before the crash. The crash photos and videos were few and showed little more than a fuzzy white flash.

Still, NASA scientists were happy.

"This is so cool," said Jennifer Heldmann, coordinator for NASA's observation campaign. "We're thrilled."

"This is going to change the way we look at the moon," NASA chief lunar scientist Michael Wargo said at the news conference.

Expectations by the public for live plume video were probably too high and based on pre-crash animations, some of which were not by NASA, project manager Dan Andrews told The Associated Press Friday morning 80 minutes after impact.

Another issue, one NASA thought was a good possibility going into Friday, was that the lighting was bad and work needs to be done on images to make them easier to see, Andrews said. Experts said the images could be essentially "gray against black," he said.

"What matters for us is: What is the nature of the stuff that was kicked up going in?" Andrews said. "All nine instruments were working fine and we received good data."

Andrews said the science team is pouring through the information, including what are supposed to be good images from ground-based telescopes on Earth - to answer the big question: Is there some form of water under the moon's surface that was dislodged? It will probably be two weeks before scientists will be certain about the answer, he said.

Before the crash, mission scientists said there was a chance that if it was really moist under the crater, they'd know about water within an hour. That's not the case now, Andrews said.

People who got up before dawn to look for the crash at Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory threw confused looks at each other instead.

Telescope demonstrator Jim Mahon called the celestial show "anticlimactic."

"I was hoping we'd see a flash or a flare," Mahon said.

About 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles, 70 elementary school students at the Lewis Center for Educational Research charter school in Apple Valley capped off their weeklong "moon camp" experience by rising early to watch NASA television along with 300 members of the public.

"It was cool seeing actual pictures of the moon live," said 10-year-old Jackson Bridges, but he added: "I wanted to see the debris flying out. It was still interesting to watch, but it was less interesting without the flying debris."

The first and much bigger crash was supposed to hit with the force of 1.5 tons of TNT into crater Cabeus and create a mini-crater about half the size of an Olympic pool. The second crash was to be about one-third as strong.

The idea is to confirm the theory that water - a key resource if people are going to go back to the moon - is hidden below the barren moonscape.

The images were to come from the probe itself. It had five cameras and four other pieces of equipment to look for ice or any form of water as it dove through the dust storm created by the empty hull.

Minutes before the first crash, NASA was riding high, reporting no trouble at the Ames Research Center in California, where the mission was being controlled.

"Everything is working so very well," NASA's Victoria Friedensen, a manager in NASA's exploration office, said minutes before the one-two smack.

For more pictures and video, visit the NASA LCROSS Web site.

[babooph]

We 've polluted all the earth water,so now we must go to the moon to pollute that water....

[sincity_q]

Is this like the Emperor's New Clothes, where we don't see anything but pretend like we do?

Considering the size of the impactor (a spent rocket booster), the inertia/speed of nearly 6000 mph, the sheer number of what could easily be called robust optical devices, all trained on a small area of the lunar surface... and nobody saw any of this. Not those watching TV, not observatories, not tens of thousands of amateur astronomers from all across the hemisphere. Only NASA, who can't even produce a decent photo of this event, claims there was an impact.

The media continues to report this as if they saw it. People comment on the subject like they saw it. We're all watching the emperor as he struts around quite naked.

This is nuts.

[rwsmith29456]

I really don't care how it LOOKED. Was it successful in doing what it was planned to do and was data captured that could answer anything?

[Wayne2121]

I'm surprised we didn't bomb the moon under the last administration (you know to look for WMD's).

[billpl-2009]

they aughta shoot that thing a texas

....probably get the same result

[taxchurches]

B-b-but if they could fake the moon landing 40 years ago, why couldn't they fake this, and maybe show a Balrog eating the capsule?

[gilmomuff]

No pictures yet from so many powerful cameras covering this event ?

Be patient, just give a chance to NASA, so they can do a better photo brushing... !

[hungry1968-16]

by Void_Master October 9, 2009 10:26 AM EDT

Really? And just *where* in space are we? Surely you're not talking about the space station. That thing isn't really in space. It orbits so freakin' low it has to boost itself back into orbit ever few days -- lest atmospheric drag (that means air friction, in care you're too stupid to figure that one out too) pulls it down.


***** Thanks for agreeing with me. For all of the HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars wasted, we have ______ to show for it. A malfunctioning and dangerous space station? Exploding shuttles? How are those MULTI - BILLION dollar "Mars Rovers" working out? (Ooops - I forgot. One NEVER MADE IT!!)






Well let's see. First, should someone hostile to the U. S. put an *actual* space station up -- say, something that orbited at around 3000 km, they would be in an excellent position to shoot down anything that tried to approach. And in fact, a few well placed missiles spraying fragmentation into geosynchronous orbit would pretty much blind most of the western world.


***** So YOUR answer is that someone, for some unknown reason, we spray fragmentation in earth's orbit, making it unusable for EVERYONE including themselves? Riiiiight.....







Like all government agencies, NASA is inefficient and bloated with bureaucracy. But it hardly wasts "TRILLIONS of dollars." It's annual budget is in the low billions -- making it one of the lowest funded federal agencies within the U. S. government.


***** NASA is inefficient, ineffective, and it's WASTING MONEY that could better be used on fixing AMERICA'S PROBLEMS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget

According to the Office of Management and Budget and the Air Force Almanac, when measured in real terms (Meaning: if the value of $1.00 at today's rate equaled the value of $1.00 in 1958), the figure is $806.7 billion, or an average of $15.818 billion dollars per year over its fifty year history.

That's a WHOLE LOT OF MONEY, with NOTHING to show for it!!!

[hungry1968-16]

by parisdakar October 9, 2009 9:27 AM EDT
Ditto. Abandoning space exploration is lazy and short sighted.







Perhaps you could tell us what we've gained for all of the TRILLIONS of dollars that we spent?

[rf35]

Tang.

[mcyclonegt]

So America leads in space exploration, but we fall behind in education, crime, and poverty. Talk about priorities. Why is it a good idea to spend all the taxpayers money on stuff most people don't need or want. What we need is to not get mugged by a uneducated poor person.