LCROSS Lunar South Polar Cabeus Crater impact Mission

[freya]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

Yes, it was hyped somewhat. I think we've been spoilt somewhat with all the great successes we have been having
in what is still, the most extreme enviroment we can place ourselves or our metal/silicon clones. At the end of the day,
the mission will prove to have been a success, water or no water. We targeted the Moon, and by golly, we gave it a pretty good whack. No matter what happens now, until we have a real physical prescence on, say, the planet Mars, and access to space is as commonplace as a plane flight across country, this is just the beginning. Two hundred years from now, someone will look back at LCROSS and will be astounded by our audacity.
Meanwhile, a bit of harmless levity from our UK cousins. It's okay. :lol: You may have to copy the link.
http://newsarse.com/2009/10/09/nasa-set ... collision/

 

[sparkyjim]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

I really do not understand what many people expected here. We had two impactors involved, the heaviest was about 900kg (just under a ton) in weight and it was hitting something almost 240,000 miles away at a relatively low speed (in space terms) and it was also hitting part of the object that is difficult to see from Earth even under ideal seeing conditions.

What did everyone expect, a massive hollywood style explosion reminiscent of volcanic plumes or a small nuke? Come on people, this was never going to be a huge explosion some seem to think it should have been. NASA would not want the impact to generate too much energy as this would scew the results. The resultant plasma produced in very spectacular impacts would create chemical reactions that would blur any results and make them largely meaningless..the point here was to find evidence of water ice, not create a special effect for observers.

 

[jakethesnake]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

Remember patience is a virtue and ignorance is most certainly bliss!

Can I quote you on that? Please?

quote away...

 

[MeteorWayne]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0 ... mages.html

"The orbiting sister spacecraft to two NASA probes that slammed into the moon last week has beamed home images and temperature maps of the two intentional crashes.

The Diviner instrument aboard NASA's powerful Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took infrared observations of the impact, flying over the moon crash site of the agency's LCROSS probe and its Centaur rocket stage about 90 seconds after impact at a height of about 50 miles (80 km) up."

 

[radarredux]

LRO Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission.

What did everyone expect, a massive hollywood style explosion reminiscent of volcanic plumes or a small nuke? Come on people, this was never going to be a huge explosion some seem to think it should have been.

er... I think most people expected what NASA *said* what to expect. It telegraphed that message in press releases, computer animations, encouraging people with just 10" telescopes to go out and look, and they encouraged people to watch live on TV.

Once again, whether you think the science aspect is good or not (again, I believe negative results are valid scientific results), NASA botched the public relations aspect.

 

[Booban]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

Remember patients is a virtue and ignorance is most certainly bliss!

Can I quote you on that? Please?

quote away...

Especially ignorance of spelling mistakes!

 

[jakethesnake]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

by Booban » Tue Oct 13, 2009 1:21 pm

Especially ignorance of spelling mistakes!

I’m not quite sure what point you're trying to make, but if it’s that I make a spelling mistake from time to time then sure.

yep... get it... patience not Patients. oops.

Nice to meet you too Booban. :?:

 

[kelvinzero]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

If NASA announced that the LCROSS mission had proven the moon was a giant potatoe, I wonder which would get more coverage, the discovery or the spelling mistake

 

[radarredux]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

Back to the mission... Has anyone heard any news on results? Did they analyze their "squiggly lines"?

I am still confused as to why it takes so long to analyze this data. They've done spectroscopic analysis for water many, many times before. Is there something unique about this data stream? Or are they embargoing the results until published?

 

[MeteorWayne]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

Sorry to disappoint you, but real accurate analysis takes time. Remember, these are weak signals buried in a bunch of noisy data. If somebody wants to shoot your mouth off, they can say things before some serious data reduction has been completed, but that's not how the scientists do things.

AT the News Conf they said they have a scheduled meeting 2 weeks after impact (It's only been a week, folks) to discuss the preliminary analysis of the data. That would be next Friday. I assume we will hear something shortly after that.

I'm quite sure it will be close to a year before the analysis is suitable for submission to a peer reviewed journal.

 

[jakethesnake]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

Sorry to disappoint you, but real accurate analysis takes time. Remember, these are weak signals busried in a bunch of noisy data. If you want to shoot your mouth off, you can say things before some serious data reduction has been completed, but that's not how the scientists do things.

AT the News Conf they said they have a scheduled meeting 2 weeks after impact (It's only been a week, folks) to discuss the preliminary analysis of the data. That would be next Friday. I assume we will hear something shortly after that.

I'm quite sure it will be close to a year before the analysis is suitable for submission to a peer reviewed journal.

Yep… it’s a little frustrating that they just don’t get what goes into weeding out the data!

Although a plume was spotted and by the looks of it, I think a wealth of quality data is to follow.

Patience is most certainly a virtue .

NASA moon crash did kick up debris plume as hoped

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 4394.story

 

[radarredux]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

Sorry to disappoint you, but real accurate analysis takes time. Remember, these are weak signals buried in a bunch of noisy data. If somebody wants to shoot your mouth off, they can say things before some serious data reduction has been completed, but that's not how the scientists do things.

I'll take that as a "No, I haven't heard anything."

A flurry of news stories came out out over the last day. Here are a few links:

NASA'S LCROSS Captures All Phases of Centaur Impact
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=32609

Elusive lunar plume caught on camera after all
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... r-all.html

LCROSS says, "Da Plume! Da Plume!"
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbe ... ume_1.html

NASA finally sees plume from moon impact
LCROSS camera captures image of ‘faint’ plume with debris, vapor
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33349329/ns ... nce-space/

Here is one of the quotes: "Within the range of model predictions we made, the ejecta brightness appears to be at the low end of our predictions and this may be a clue to the properties of the material the Centaur impacted". I always find the unexpected results the most interesting.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

Again, these are at best preliminary reports, even before the most basic analysis has had time to be completed. That is why the "two week after impact" meeting was set up.

All this is pure, unsubstantiated speculation with no real scientific basis, and I don't care what the source is. Sure they are first reports that some data has been returned, NOT what it means yet.

I'll look at the links now. My statement stands even before I look at them.

"Did they see any sign of water? "Stay tuned," says Colaprete, who aims to have an analysis of the data done by mid-November."

"In the coming weeks, the LCROSS team and other observation assets will continue to analyze and verify data collected from the LCROSS impacts. Any new information will undergo the normal scientific review process and will be released as soon as it is available. "

"We are blown away by the data returned," Colaprete said. "The team is working hard on the analysis and the data appear to be of very high quality."

All of which says there is some data, but it is not usefully scientific data yet, which is what I said. Let's at least wait for the 2 week after impact get together confab to happen before any assumptions about what has been discovered is written into the book.

It is good news that some high quality data has been returned. That's all any resonable scientist wanted by this point. Let's not jump to any conclusions just yet

Wayne

 

[nimbus]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

I haven't seen LRO mentioned anywhere. Is it not equipped to be of any use, or is it's orbit what's disqualifying it, or .. ?

 

[MeteorWayne]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

It made observations of the impact plume. The data is being analyzed

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/m ... cross.html

 

[nimbus]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

That's twice I miss something that obvious.. Thanks Wayne.

 

[radarredux]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

Here is what bothers me:

But Michio Kaku, a professor at the City College of New York and host of "Sci Q Sundays" on the Science Channel, said NASA may be jumping the gun in calling the results "a smashing success," acting in response to public criticism of the mission.

"To be a spectacular success, we had to find large quantities of underground ice," Kaku told The Associated Press Saturday. He said scientists still have more work to do to analyze the data for the presence of ice or water.

"They got beautiful pictures of the event, but that's not why we spent $79 million," Kaku said. "Ice on the moon is more valuable than gold."

My concern is that the scientific results are getting politicized. I feel there has been too much pressure to find water in these cold traps. A year or two ago NASA released a potential Lunar outpost map identifying the specific rim of a polar crater there they could get near continuous solar power and mine cold traps for ice.

And when there have been discussions on making the Moon or Mars as the primary next target, the Lunar ice is almost always used as a justification for going to the Moon -- discussions about generating fuel for deep space missions and oxygen for settlements.

But watching the Human Space Flight committee discussions, none of this seems to matter since even in the optimistic funding scenarios there isn't close to enough money for the next 20+ years to develop the infrastructure to take advantage of the ice.

And even if there is considerable amount of ice there, I have yet to see any analysis that would justify the expense to use it as a fuel. The cost of developing the infrastructure to work in just about the coldest location in the solar system, the cost to get the infrastructure up there, the cost to maintain and operate the infrastructure in an incredibly hostile environment, the costs of fuel to break into Lunar orbit (to refuel) and then to break out of it -- I'm not convinced it would save enough using the Lunar-generated fuel to say go to Mars or even the outer planets for occasional missions.

Likewise, for using it as oxygen and water for crew on the Moon -- what population size would you need to have and for how long would they need to be there to justify the cost of developing and operating the infrastructure? And would it be better to increase recycling capabilities (as is already being tested on ISS)?

Finally, there is the potential for H2O and OH in the surface regolith recently announced. What is the relative costs of extracting fuel and consumables from there as opposed to the cold traps?

In short, I feel some in NASA want to find considerable amounts of ice in the cold traps in order to justify certain future missions/funding, and that is clouding what is coming out by press releases and quotes coming out of NASA and coloring the choice of words being used. But even if considerable ice is found, it seems to me that it won't matter much for at least a generation.

My personal feeling is that I would prefer letting the scientific merit of the findings on the Moon should dominate the discussion and not the potential to exploit the water ice.

 

[kelvinzero]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

Its a bit rough to say the scientific results are getting politicized before there even are any scientific results.

Sure there could be bias amongst people most closely involved in the projects, but that will only affect interpretations. Im assuming raw data has to be released to be interpreted by everyone or else it isnt science, just say-so.

Sure there are very exciting possibilites that are not related to the science but I cant see them perverting the whole scientific process. We just have to wait for the wider scientific community to go over whatever NASA finds with a fine tooth comb.

Reading between the lines I get the impression you are seeing the moon only in terms of cost effectiveness for a mars mission. Or am I actually reading the lines?

 

[radarredux]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

Reading between the lines I get the impression you are seeing the moon only in terms of cost effectiveness for a mars mission. Or am I actually reading the lines?

My concern that there is too much emphasis on this direction by NASA and the media. My worry is that should there not be a lot of water found at the poles, then there will be this great let down (whether it is economically viable to use it or not, emotionally it might be a let down).

At the very least the Moon is a great time capsule for the Solar System. It has no erosion and no geological processes (at least for a long time) and it is relatively easy to get to (especially with respect to turn around times and launch windows if not necessarily delta-Vs). Stuff from space has been settling on it for billions of years and then preserved. I would love to see some robotic core-drilling missions sent to various locations on the Moon.

We barely scratched the surface of the Moon in the 1960s and early 1970s, and then we forgot all about it. I am glad it is finally getting its due again. But I am concerned that there isn't a lot (anything?) planned following LRO, and human return is now pushed back to probably the late 2020s, and that is only a skeletal Apollo-class type activity (a few small sorties).

Anyone know of any additional robotic follow up missions in the funding pipeline?

 

[job1207]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

If a tree crashes in the woods on the earth, and no one sees it, did it make a sound???? If a space craft crashes into the moon and everyone is watching, did it make a sound??? If a plume of dust is launched into space, could the earth get hit by a dust storm?

answers

1 yes
2 no
3 no, but a particle or two could find itself to earth in a millenia or two. Why not.

Now, back to the matter at hand. NASA hopes that the quantity of water on the Moon can support operations. Gee, whiz. If that is the case, the operations will either be minimal, or extremely efficient, or they will have come up with a system that can process LARGE areas of the moon, or they actually found an area of the moon with MORE water than anyone ever thought a few years ago.

34 years ago today, Carlton Fisk hit his HR heard around the world.

 

[jakethesnake]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

Here is some preliminary results from an instrument aboard LCROSS the Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) probed and so it doesn’t look like water was found so far, but more results are supposed to follow in about two weeks.

Although they are hinting that maybe water was found :?:

From SKY & TELESCOPE

By Kelly Beatty, November 3, 2009

Strange Brew at LCROSS's Crash Site

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/68841092.html

All this speculation is intriguing — but "Where's the beef?" you might ask. Colaprete assures me that all the instruments in the shepherding spacecraft got great results, and that the delay in revealing the compositional analyses stems from having lots of spectral signatures to sort through and categorize. Colaprete says some of these findings will be made public in a couple of weeks. (Don't be surprised if he announces that one of the spectrometers did, indeed, detect water in the plume.)

Let me tantalize you with a preliminary result from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which viewed the Centaur's demise from nearly overhead and just 48 miles (76 km) up. An instrument dubbed the Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) probed the ultraviolet spectrum of the impact plume after it had risen high enough to be projected against black space above the lunar limb.

"We definitely saw something," notes LAMP scientist Randy Gladstone (Southwest Research Institute). But that "something" wasn't water. Nor was it oxygen or hydrogen atoms, both of which have strong ultraviolet emissions. There's some hint of hydrogen molecules (H2) — and though water is one source of hydrogen, it could also have come from silicate minerals, solar-wind gas trapped in the lunar soil, or (most likely) residual fuel in the Centaur's tanks.

LAMP's strongest and most intriguing observation came at the ultraviolet wavelength of 184-185 nanometers. Gladstone says the only known elements able to create that line are iron, perhaps magnesium … and mercury. "Both mercury and iron still look like the best bets for explaining the plume emission we see with LAMP," Gladstone reiterates, though the spectral match is still tentative and more data-crunching is in progress.

LRO's Diviner instrument (here sensing wavelengths from 25 to 50 microns) recorded the lunar surface before and after the LCROSS impact and detected the resulting crater (arrow).
NASA / GSFC / UCLA

 

[radarredux]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

Colaprete assures me that all the instruments in the shepherding spacecraft got great results, and that the delay in revealing the compositional analyses stems from having lots of spectral signatures to sort through and categorize.

I assume they knew there would be "lots of spectral signatures to sort through and categorize", so that doesn't explain why there is "delay in revealing the compositional analyses".

I guess it irritates me that the media doesn't ask this question straight up. And it irritated me earlier when NASA was essentially stating everything went according to plan. Getting something unexpected in science is perfectly acceptable -- in fact, that is sometimes when we learn new stuff. To quote Asimov:

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I've found it!), but 'That's funny...' -Isaac Asimov.

One of my concerns is that there is internal pressure to announce that they have found water or suppress (i.e., be quiet about) the fact that no or very little water was found. NASA heavily promoted its reason for going to the Moon and where to go to the Moon based on the assumption that there is water in cold traps to be used as rocket fuel, consumables for outposts, etc.

LAMP's strongest and most intriguing observation came at the ultraviolet wavelength of 184-185 nanometers. Gladstone says the only known elements able to create that line are iron, perhaps magnesium … and mercury. "Both mercury and iron still look like the best bets for explaining the plume emission we see with LAMP," Gladstone reiterates, though the spectral match is still tentative and more data-crunching is in progress.

They must have hit the Monolith. :lol:

 

[MeteorWayne]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

Colaprete assures me that all the instruments in the shepherding spacecraft got great results, and that the delay in revealing the compositional analyses stems from having lots of spectral signatures to sort through and categorize.

I assume they knew there would be "lots of spectral signatures to sort through and categorize", so that doesn't explain why there is "delay in revealing the compositional analyses".

I guess it irritates me that the media doesn't ask this question straight up. And it irritated me earlier when NASA was essentially stating everything went according to plan. Getting something unexpected in science is perfectly acceptable -- in fact, that is sometimes when we learn new stuff. To quote Asimov:

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I've found it!), but 'That's funny...' -Isaac Asimov.

:lol:

Well, everything did go according to plan. The Centaur hit the crater. That was the plan. After that it's all data collection, data reduction, and analysis.

The reason there's a delay is that the analysis is not done yet, or even close to being done. You are condoning another question from the media like "Why didn't we have the results in 2 hours?" How is that helpful?

C'mon, real science takes time!

 

[jakethesnake]

Re: LRO/LCROSS Mission

Colaprete assures me that all the instruments in the shepherding spacecraft got great results, and that the delay in revealing the compositional analyses stems from having lots of spectral signatures to sort through and categorize.

I assume they knew there would be "lots of spectral signatures to sort through and categorize", so that doesn't explain why there is "delay in revealing the compositional analyses".

I guess it irritates me that the media doesn't ask this question straight up. And it irritated me earlier when NASA was essentially stating everything went according to plan. Getting something unexpected in science is perfectly acceptable -- in fact, that is sometimes when we learn new stuff. To quote Asimov:

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I've found it!), but 'That's funny...' -Isaac Asimov.

One of my concerns is that there is internal pressure to announce that they have found water or suppress (i.e., be quiet about) the fact that no or very little water was found. NASA heavily promoted its reason for going to the Moon and where to go to the Moon based on the assumption that there is water in cold traps to be used as rocket fuel, consumables for outposts, etc.

LAMP's strongest and most intriguing observation came at the ultraviolet wavelength of 184-185 nanometers. Gladstone says the only known elements able to create that line are iron, perhaps magnesium … and mercury. "Both mercury and iron still look like the best bets for explaining the plume emission we see with LAMP," Gladstone reiterates, though the spectral match is still tentative and more data-crunching is in progress.

They must have hit the Monolith. :lol:

One of my main jobs at my place of employment is image analysis of powdered metal microstructures.

Some of the image composites I put together are comprised of over 12,000 images; I measure everything from carbon content, percentage of alloying materials, phase structures and densities.

To verify calibration and weed out the NOISE is quite the task; this can take weeks on just one analysis, and what I am doing doesn’t even remotely come close to analyzing spectral data from cutting edge if not prototype equipment.

You are also missing one very important point… Confidence levels! These guys/gals are going to release their findings to the world for per-review as I also do, albeit to a much lesser degree.

You certainly don’t want to… and to put it bluntly… shoot yourself in the ASS with an oversight of stupidity.

Allot is riding on what they say, allot is riding on what they are potentially wrong about… it could cost them their careers.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Just ran across a blurb in Science that the first serious analysis (though still quite preliminary) might be released at the American Geophysical Union conference December 14-18. Jon Clarke usually has good ears in advance of such events. Maybe he'll be able to give us a heads up when the abstracts come out.
MW