Slamming the Moon
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi...ull/2006/410/2

By Richard A. Kerr
ScienceNOW Daily News
10 April 2006

NASA is being quite the bully of the solar system lately. First it
pummeled comet Tempel 1 to see what it's like inside (ScienceNOW, 5
July 2005). And today NASA announced at a Washington, D.C., press
conference that it's going to bash a spent rocket and then a
satellite into a crater near the moon's south pole to see if there's
any ice buried there. Lunar water hinted at in observations from
orbit could provide rocket fuel for NASA's exploration beyond the
moon to Mars.

The kamikaze mission is an added duty for the rocket. Its primary
duty is to launch the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which is
scheduled to blast off in October 2008. But during the design phase,
NASA had found that the rocket would have some unused lifting
capacity, so the call went out for a secondary payload that would
advance NASA's exploration of the moon and Mars while keeping the
added cost below $80 million and the added weight under 1000
kilograms. Four months later, Daniel Andrews of NASA's Ames Research
Center at Moffett Field, California, and his team have beaten out 18
other competitors with a proposal for a payload called the Lunar
Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). First the LRO's
upper stage rocket will slam into the inky depths of Shackleton
crater, followed closely by the LCROSS satellite.

See: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi...ull/2006/410/2