Deep Impact

It's not often, or ever, that NASA intentionally sends a spacecraft into a suicidal dive bomb on a celestial body, but that's pretty much precisely what happened this morning at 7:30am EDT.  The unmanned Centaur rocket, which had helped carry a Lunar observer satellite (LRO) into orbit just a few months previous, launched itself at the bottom of the moon, in an effort to determine whether there was, in fact, frozen water on the surface of the moon.  

      This moon bombing was the answer to two significant and related problems.  Problem 1.) How do you collect samples from always shadowed, frozen parts of the moon where no manned mission is ever likely to go, leaving out the possibility that we still may never actually send men (or women) to the moon again.  Problem 2.)  Assuming robots are the answer to problem 1, how do you design a mission that is both cheap and reliable (gets the job done, the first time) and can meet NASA mission criteria?  The Centaur rocket, used extensively (hundreds of successful launches) by NASA to get satellites into their proper orbit around Earth and beyond, is usually just a piece of space junk after it's performed the duty of shepherding a satellite beyond the Earth's gravitational reach.  This time, however, the folks at the NASA Ames Research Center decided that with a little extra effort, they could utilize the Centaur to gather moon samples by launching it into the moon, creating a massive plume of moon debris, which a second satellite, LCROSS, could then swing by and scoop up.  By collecting samples without the requirement of a safe and controlled landing on the lunar surface, the project was able to meet its objective--collect moon samples from a hard to reach spot on the moon--using mostly off-the-shelf technology and hardware which dramatically reduces the cost.  While some might consider this method of sample collection as primitive and not a very nice way to treat our only near companion in space, you have to consider the fact that the moon has been and continues to be pelted by far worse than our little Centaur rocket.