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Secondary payload that would, advance NASA's exploration of themoon
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 |
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