Lunar Litterbugs
The European Space Agency plans on dumping a bunch of litter across the lunar landscape sometime around 1:20 am EDT when they crash their SMART-1 spacecraft onto the surface of the moon.
BERLIN - Europe's first mission to the moon got a scare, but ground controllers made a last-minute course correction early Saturday that kept the craft from hitting the surface earlier than planned.
Mission officials said they raised the low point of the SMART-1 spacecraft about 2,000 feet by using its positioning thrusters to avoid the almost mile-high rim of a moon crater.
The maneuver began late Friday night from the European Space Agency's mission control in Darmstadt and was completed about three hours later, said Octavio Camino, spacecraft operations chief for the mission.
"We have got confirmation that the maneuver was successful," Camino said.
SMART-1 has been orbiting lower and lower ahead of Sunday's scheduled impact, which experts hope to study for clues to the composition of the surface in that area. Without the correction, it would have crashed one orbit too soon, making the impact difficult or impossible to observe.
The craft is to end its three-year voyage at 1:41 a.m. EDT Sunday by crashing into a volcanic plain called the Lake of Excellence at 4,475 mph. The impact could increase understanding of how the lunar surface evolved and help test a theory that the moon originated when another astronomical body slammed into the Earth.
Even before the $140 million mission ended, ESA was celebrating the main goal — a successful test of the ion engine that it hopes to use for future interplanetary flights, such as the BepiColombo joint mission to Mercury with Japan's space agency slated for launch in 2013.
Litterbugs. Anyway, here's a link to a description of the rather cool ion engine they tested and here's the Space.com article about the first ignition. This is the planned impact area in case you feel like staying up late tonight. And just for fun, here is a really cool interactive map of the moon to play around with.
