NASA Moon Bombing LCROSS Mission, Watch Video Of Moon Bombing, Rocket Explosion

On Friday morning, an unmanned spacecraft launched in June will crash into the moon's surface.


NASA's LCROSS mission (short for Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) sends a spent booster rocket crashing into a crater near the lunar south pole, looking to see if there is ice mixed in the soil of the crater's floor.

Scientists think there may be billions of gallons of it, but so far they haven't been able to prove it.

LCROSS launched with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on June 18, 2009 at 2:32 p.m. PDT. The LCROSS shepherding spacecraft and the Atlas V’s Centaur upper stage rocket executed a fly-by of the moon on June 23, 2009.

LCROSS booster will go plowing into the moon's surface at 5,600 miles per hour. It is expected to make a crater about 60 feet across -- and send 350 tons of rock and soil flying in all directions, creating a plume several miles high. If there is ice mixed in, a small satellite, flying on the same path less than 400 miles behind the rocket, should be able to detect it before it crashes too, about four minutes later.

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