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The LCROSS Mission

Space Science Division scientist Dr. Anthony Colaprete (seen at left) is the principal investigator on the LCROSS mission that was selected as the Secondary Payload for the LRO mission. Most other PIs worry about their space craft crashing, but not Tony, he is going to crash his on purpose, thats the whole point of the mission. Like the Deep Impact Mission the plan is to use an impact to generate gas and dust that can be studied. LCROSS will deliver a 2000 kg impactor that will create nearly a 1000 metric ton plume of lunar ejecta- more than 200 times the energy of Lunar prospector- which will be visible from a number of Lunar-orbital and Earth-based assets. This will reveal new information about the composition of ice in the permanently shadowed region of the south pole that will be the target. See Dr. Anthony Colaprete in a video from KQED's Quest science program.

You can read NASA LCROSS press release and you can see artists represenations and read about it at SETI as well as many other web pages including ABC news, Popular Mechanics, Space.com, and astrobio.net just to name a few.

A recent article about the LCROSS mission entitled 'NASA Ames Spacecraft to Smash into a Pole of the moon in Search of Ice' appeared on spacedaily.com. It features images from high-speed video taken at the NASA Ames Vertical Gun Range which was used to simulate the lunar impacts by firing small pellets into materials that represented the lunar surface. P.I. Tony Colaprete from NASA Ames is quoted. See /www.spacedaily.com

Naturally, the impact will be observed from space at various wavelengths using assets aboard the spacecraft that will follow the impactor, and also observations will be made from the ground. To prepare for this mission scientists have been simulating the impact, both with computers and by experiments. Below are some images (taken by Jennifer Heldmann) of work being done at the Ames vertical gun range where they can create high-velocity (i.e., km/sec) impacts.

First, here is an overall image of the vertical gun. The blue thing is a large chamber that holds the target and above which stands a large scaffold that holds the gun and impactor which fire downwards.

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Second, we see Brown University Professor Peter Schultz standing in the doorway of the sample chamber while speaking with Space Science Division scientist Kim Ennico, at left.

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finally, after the impact, Peter Schultz inside the chamber pointing out features of an impact crater created from one of the firings.

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A the end of July the LCROSS team had a visit from Ben Bussey of APL who is the LPRP Program Scientist for LCROSS who came for a briefing on the status of LCROSS science. Depicted (from left to right) are Kim Ennico, Diane Wooden, tony Colaprete, Tony Ricco, Geoff Briggs, and Ben Bussey.

For more information about the LCROSS mission please contact Dr. Tony Colaprete at 650-604-2918 or anthony.colaprete-1 at nasa.gov (where you replace the ' at ' with '@' of course).


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