LCROSS to crash into the moon on Friday morning

Howard reminds me that LCROSS is scheduled to impact the moon on Friday.

Astronomy Service Slooh Will Let You Watch The LCROSS Impact Live On October 9 at 7:30am EDT.

"The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite will hit the moon to created a crater 14 meters in diameter and 2 meters deep. The resulting analysis will help assess how large bodies will damage planets along with an assessment of current water levels in the moon. Plus it involves blowing holes in the moon."

I have been following LCROSS on twitter since its launch. It tends to post quippy remarks about its position and snippets of traveling songs and moon songs. For instance:


These song quotes are from Ticket to the Moon by ELO.

This quote is from the Grateful Dead song, Yellow Moon. This is the tweet that started me worrying about LCROSS's sanity. It's the kind of thing a computer would say before it took over the laboratory and started killing everybody.


Quotes from Space Truckin' by Deep Purple.


LCROSS's nightmare above is courtesy of Bat Out of Hell by Meat Loaf.


I have this song on my iPod, "Fly Me To the Moon", the Frank Sinatra version.


I also have this song on my iPod, "Destination Moon", the Dinah Washington version on Ultra-Loung Vol 15: Wild Cool and Swing' Too. The other quote is from Tambourine Man by Bob Dylan.

I have now become invested in its fate and I will be sorry to see it crash into the moon.

I realize that whoever is posting for LCROSS is trying to generate interest but having a twitter feed to which anthropomorphisizes a device destined for destruction is getting to me a little. Especially since the discovery of water on the moon by other means may make its destruction fruitless. It claims that it isn't doomed but on a heroic mission like some that have gone before:


Perhaps I am felling a little maudlin.

(other moon songs can be found here.)

Surviving the vacuum of space.

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

From the website:

Congrats! You could survive for 1 minute 17 seconds !

In the first 30 seconds any fluid on the surface of your body would begin to boil due to lack of ambient pressure, this includes the saliva on your tongue and the moisture in your eyes. Your eardrums would most likely burst due to the pressure in your body trying to equalize with the vacuum outside. Unlike what some science fiction films have suggested, your body would not explode.

After the first 15 seconds you would lose consciousness. If you held your breath you could potentially stay alive longer but you risk pulmonary trauma. If you didn't hold your breath you'd pass out sooner, but your lungs might have a better chance of avoiding permanent damage.

The pressure in your veins would rise until your heart no longer had the capacity to pump blood, at which point you'd die.

Eek!


Mental note, avoid the vacuum of space. Who could ever forget the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey when Dave Bowman has to jump across space without a space helmet in vacuum from the pod to the airlock because that darn HAL wouldn't let him in. Always remember your equipment!

(Image and the details on surviving the vacuum of space without a space suit discussed by experts at aerospaceweb)

China fails to pick up its Space Junk

China's recent destruction of a satellite with space weaponry has produced more space junk for all. I discussed this issue in a previous note last year (The sky is not falling - orbital debris threatens satellites) based on an interesting article in Science describing the threat to orbital facilities - communications satellites, weather satellites, telescopes and space stations - from space debris. The debris comes from pieces of the spacecraft breaking apart, from collisions and from old spacecraft themselves.

One of the authors of the Science article, Nicholas L. Johnson, chief scientist for orbital debris at NASA, recapitulates his advice for dealing with the problem. He suggests deorbiting old satellites or destroying debris with ground based lasers and implicitly adds a new suggestion - don't actively blow up or test weapons that create large amounts of debris. The fear is that enough debris will create a chain reaction and destruction as impacts break apart satellites and add to the debris field, creating more impacts, etc.

The graphics produced by the New York Times to illustrate the danger are what I would have produced with the satellite data from the Union of Concerned Scientists from this post combined with the debris data from above if I had the infinite time and resources that they have (only in comparison to me). The charts are informative. I like to think that my approach preserved more scientific information about the orbits while the NYT's approach was prettier.



Now that the Chinese have blown up a whole satellite, it seems silly to worry about that golf ball in orbit stunt now doesn't it?

I must also mention the deleterious effect this worrying about space debris is already having on the astronaut corps.

(NYT article found by Slashdot)

(alternative post title - Whatcha gonna do with all that Space Junk? All that Space junk inside your trunk. )

tags: satellite, astronomy, science,