ESA scientists are considering ending the life of the Smart-1 spacecraft in August of this year in a controlled crash on the moon
European Space Agency scientists are considering ending the life of the Smart-1 spacecraft in August of this year in a controlled crash on the moon. "We will probably use the last drops of hydrazine fuel to adjust the impact data and move it so that it occurs on the near side of the moon." said the European Space Agency's chief scientist Bernard Pueng.
The Smart-1 spacecraft weighs 290 kg and will hit the moon at a very sharp angle - it will literally rub the surface of the moon.
"I would like to call on the expert community to make predictions for the size of the flash of the impact - in the visible and infrared fields, the dynamics of the emission of materials from the lunar soil after the impact, effects on the dust and the weak exosphere of the moon, as well as to coordinate observations of groups from many sites on Earth.
A similar type of experiment was done some six and a half years ago when NASA crushed the Lunar Prospector spacecraft in a controlled crash into a crater in the South Pole area of the Moon. The spacecraft crashed into the lunar surface on July 31, 1999, to try to observe signatures of water. These signatures were not discovered, not even after years of digging through data from images of the impact and its effects taken from ground telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope.
