On October 9th NASA fired an empty shell warhead followed be a camera loaded trailer toward the moon. It was called LCROSS mission which was to test for water on the moon. How it worked was the empty shell would impact the moon’s surface which would throw up a lot of debris that could be analyzed. This is why NASA sent a 90 second delayed trailing satellite that would capture a good close up image and video of the debris. The satellite would then send the information back to Earth which would an analyzed. There has been a long debate on if there is water on moon. On October 9th the LCROSS mission did in fact uncover water on the moon. The thing that was so cool about this mission is that NASA used the slingshot method to fire the “bullet”. The empty shell was sent up into Earth’s orbit which revolved multiple times over 38 days. As you get further away from the Earth but remain in orbit the faster the object will travel. Once the shell had reached a very fast speed it was ignited out of orbit and slung towards the moon. The crash was so big that an amateur telescope was able to see it from Earth.
One thing about this mission that was really neat was that NASA let the people watch what they were watching by streaming the trailing satellites video on the internet. I got up at 7am to watch it that morning. This would be a great move for NASA if they could involve the public more like they did with the LCROSS mission in future missions. There are people who think that NASA is just a waste of money. I believe that they say this because they don’t get anything out of it. There will be more people backing NASA if they can get the public somewhat involved instead of seeming mysterious and hidden.
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