The European spacecraft Smart-1 orbiting the moon is set to crash into its surface on September 2 or 3, when observers with ground-based telescopes will be able to see the crash.
The spacecraft will crash into the Lake of Excellence, an area with interesting mineralogy, right on the edge of the far side of the moon and on the border between day and night. This time allows the scientists to get a contrast thanks to which it will be possible to see the crash, when the fragments of dust that will be blown up during it will be illuminated by the sunlight and will also reflect the light coming from the Earth.
The time chosen is Sunday at 05:41 GMT (08:41 Israel time), and the best place to watch it will be from telescopes in South America and the North West of the USA, Hawaii and Australia. However, there is a fear that the spaceship will crash on a mountainside in one of the previous laps. For example, it could crash at 00:37 GMT (03:07 Israel time), then it would be possible to watch it from the Canary Islands and South America, or even earlier, on September 2nd at 19:33, then it would be possible to watch the crash from Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Since the speed of the crash will be about 2 kilometers per second, Smart-1 will open a crater with a diameter of 5-10 meters and a depth of about one meter - about a crater that creates a meteorite weighing two kilograms. Powerful telescopes on Earth may see a faint flash from the impact itself, followed by a 5 kilometer diameter cloud of dust blown up by the collision.
Amateur astronomers around the world volunteered to watch the explosion, to examine the properties of the minerals below the surface. However, if the dust cloud stretches to a distance of more than 20 kilometers towards the illuminated area of the moon, enthusiasts will be able to follow the cloud using binoculars or small telescopes.
