NASA to smash its spacecraft INTO THE MOON NASA's twin lunar-orbiting GRAIL spacecraft are preparing to smash into the surface of the Moon as a final send-off. The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) ships, Ebb and Flow, will be intentionally crash-landed on the Moon now that their low orbit and fuel levels have ended their mission abilities. The crash …
I'm guessing they fire them towards the destination, adjusted for the angle of approach. So that they can only get there quicker, and not change the destination.
Download Kerbal Space Program (demo of buy the full) and you can actually do this for yourself in a scaled down moon/earth version. Should take you no longer than 15 minutes. That's assuming it's done in your first attempt. It takes most about 100 tries. :D
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> this seems like mindless vandalism to me...
Maybe it is, but the first thing to do would to explore how likely the following two assertions are to be correct:
-The engineers have a reason to do what they are doing, but subtleties of their reasoning have not survived the journey through a Reg article... or
-The engineers are mindless vandals.
My first assumption was that it was being done to study the resulting impact, but the article says that won't be seen at the time. Maybe it is enough for them to study the crater/ejected material after the event, but they are destroying the second probe soon afterwards. Maybe it is just some house-keeping, keeping junk out of orbit so as not to pose a danger to future missions to the Moon (however small a chance). Dunno.
"Maybe it is just some house-keeping, keeping junk out of orbit so as not to pose a danger to future missions to the Moon"
That explanation actually makes a lot of sense. Moon having no significant atmosphere, any junk orbiting it will remain there practically forever, unlike junk in Earth orbits.
Monday 17th evening: craft impact with the moon
Tuesday 18th : crack pots claim moon is wobbling. NASA issue press release denouncing such theories.
Wednesday 19th : serious scientist concur that their measurements indicate a distinct oscillation. NASA remain quiet.
Thursday 20th : Both amateur astrologists and professional boffins suggest that the Moon may be getting closer to the earth. NASA release press statement, neither confirming nor denying this, but irrefutably denying that it could, in any way, be their fault.
Friday 21st : Somewhere on a different plane of existence, the sublimed Mayan's tell us "We tried to warn you"
Why everyone knows that the reason NASA is so fond of crashing stuff and bombing the moon isn't to get rid of spacecraft or to identify what's in the blast dust, but that they are trying to wipe out the ancient buildings and artefacts that the Apollo astronauts encountered, in case of any near-future human settlement.
...as no less than the New York Times did. How this nonsense, transparently false even to the ancients, still gets into news items of large outlets that have science staff, is totally baffling to me.
The Moon no more has a 'dark' side than the Earth.
It is the far side, which word likewise has only one syllable, and the added virtue of one less letter. It shouldn't be too hard to spell.
Granted, but the evocation of Gary Larson and Pink Floyd is a small price to pay (or maybe even a bonus) for free science education for people who still think the moon landing was filmed in Hollywood and that global warming is going to fry the planet to a crisp by 2100.
And the NYT science filters ought to be doing something for their paycheck.
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