Everyone understands our natural instinct to find information that was never before ever surfaced. But even more, man is on the verge of discovering something grand or accepting another mistake. We are testing a great and essential hypothesis, whether there is a substantial amount of water or not. A spacecrafts will hit the moon on purpose, creating a BAM! letting the dust rise like a cloud of nebulous raindrops, obliterating everything to search what it is looking for: water. Unlike Other Missions, LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) is a low budget short-term project. LCROSS itself costs about 79 million. Compare that to our 2 million dollar football turf the school district just built. At the moment, it is being hurled at 2,638mph into the moon. The blast radius is around 20 meters.
Not only we are searching for water, but we are also searching for Helium 3. Abundantly, Helium 3 is found in the sun and on gaseous planets such as Saturn. If this technology is found on the moon, then we can harness this energy once we set of colonies on moon.
So, here's the game plan. LCROSS shoots towards the moon. At closer range, it shoots out an explosive if you will, onto the Cabeus crater near the south pole. Moon's South Pole is where earlier findings of water was evident. As the debris fly out, LCROSS will attempt to gather as much information as possible before crashing onto the moon itself. LCROSS is equipped with spectrometers, near-infrared cameras, a visible camera, and a visible radiometer.
CROSS even has its own Twitter Feed. Here's a Twitter quote supposedly written by the LCROSS, "Where am i now? Travelin' 1.18km (2638 mph). 76,435 km from the Moon ... 21 hrs! RU Excited? I am!" #lcross
Well, you can feel the excitement at NASA. And it all comes to this: What does it all means for us? From the obvious lie about Martians to life on other planets, I think we have a pretty good crack at this. I'm sure that we will find water. The question is now: how much water? Will it be enough for mankind to set up a miniature colony? Of course all this means nothing if the mission is a failure.
But it may mean something as diverse and large scale as two world. Or maybe literally.
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