Chandrayan not a failure: NASA astronaut

NASA astronaut Edward Michael Fincke on Friday said the Indian moon mission 'Chandrayan' was not a failure, but an "amazing success".
"There is a lot of speculation about the mission being failed. On the contrary, it was a success with 95 per cent of its objectives achieved," Fincke, a veteran of two missions in the International Space Station ISS), told reporters here.
"This not the official view but my own perspective as an astronaut and the fact that Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was able to put a satellite to orbit the moon and plant the Indian Flag on the surface of the moon is indeed mazing," said Fincke, married to NASA engineer Renita Saikia whose parents hail from Assam.
The NASA astronaut, currently on a 11-day visit to the North East, interacted with nearly five thousand students and professors of schools, colleges, universities and the local IIT.
"NASA has sponsored my trip to the region. We can do a lot to promote interest in space exploration in the region. Personally, I will keep the communication open and we will find a way through different channels," he said.

NASA to BLAST Moon with Kinetic Bomb

With all the information that has recently been disclosed regarding alien bases on the back side of the moon, it makes one wonder if we asked for anyone's permission to bomb the moon for any reason. Have you been asked by your state officials? I have not!
It's evident that NASA doesn't have full confirmation of the moon's interior composition at this time, if they did then the presence of water would have already been detected long ago. Their is obviously a cause for concern, should the series of blasts effect a change in the elliptical forces which guide our tidal ocean flows, the Earth's seas could lose their natural cycles; resulting in massive sea life disruption.
Here's the plan: NASA stated it plans two missle impacts that will excavate some 500 metric tons of lunar material and begin the search for a long-frozen water source.
The project will also examine the moon's mineral makeup. An accompanying probe, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), will spend at least a year creating the most minutely detailed map of the moon's surface ever seen by staying at an orbit of about 50km - the closest continual lubar orbit of any spacecraft.
LRO's $US500 million ($A630.91 million) mission is designed to provide NASA with maps of unprecedented accuracy, which will be crucial for scoping out possible landing sites for astronauts.
In space, we need to always by our behavior, present a message that we are a peaceful cautious responsible people who consider the potential presence of life before we act. Bombing the interior of a Moon crater when we do not know for sure what is down there is incredibly rash, just plain wrong, and does not fit this message. Is it possible that this scientific event is disguised by another hidden agenda? In this video Sgt., Karl Wolf, USAF, Air Tactical Command gives his findings that alien based on the moon are well documented by the government.If there is in fact an alien base on the moon, we hope that they have been informed and agree with NASA on behalf of the human race to drop a 2-ton kinetic weapon in the aim of creating a 5 mile wide deep crater. If not advised this so called scientific event could in be disguised as Earth's first interplanetary war!

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NASA TV Coverage of LCROSS Impact

NASA TV Coverage of LCROSS Impact

View Video : http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/on_demand_video.html

NASA moon bombing blast for moon ice

NASA's Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) is shown in an artist's rendering - so far photos of the actual impact on the lunar surface have not come through to NASA.

They promised rockets to the moon with explosive views of the lunar pole! They got back fuzzy photos.
In what's been dubbed the LCROSS mission, NASA officials launched two spacecraft straight toward the lunar pole early Friday on a mission to find hidden crater ice.
But the results weren't exactly what scientists predicted.
LCROSS stands for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.
Monitoring equipment confirmed that a large empty rocket hull smacked into the moon's surface at 7:31 a.m., followed by a probe equipped with cameras four minutes later, the Associated Press reported.
Instead of the explosive views they expected, screens set up to channel images from the lunar camera to the public on the Internet and in observatories showed fuzz. Scientists had predicted a 6-mile plume of dust that would offer tons of data, but initial images showed just a fuzzy white flash.
In interviews with the Associated Press, NASA scientists were optimistic nonetheless. "This is so cool ... we're thrilled," said Jennifer Heldmann, coordinator for NASA's observation campaign.
LCROSS scientist Anthony Colaprete said images of the plume may still come.
"We saw a crater; we saw a flash, so something had to happen in between," he said, suggesting the plume may have occurred, but not been visible.
Colaprete said light spectrum measurements - which were collected properly - will be more important in determining whether there is some form of water on the moon.
"What matters for us is: What is the nature of the stuff that was kicked up going in?" said NASA project manager Dan Andrews. Read more:

NASA set for Lunar blast on Friday

Is there water on the moon? That's the burning question that NASA hopes its mission to blast the moon on Friday will answer. This comes just weeks after Isro and NASA announced discovery of evidence of water there.
On Friday, the US Space agency will send two unmanned spacecraft into the moon's south pole at 9,000 kmph kicking up a 10 km high shower of debris. Scientists hope the cloud will confirm the presence of enough water necessary to supply future visits by astronauts. Within an hour of the impact, scientists will know whether water was hiding there or not.
Some astronomers may be able to view the impact through a telescope, however, if you would like to watch the mission live via the NASA website, click here http://www.nasa.gov/
NASA will also provide early pictures of the controversial mission.

NASA 'bombs' the moon to find water

The US space agency NASA has crashed a rocket into a crater on the south pole of the moon in the hope of detecting water. This is the first mission of the Constellation programme, which aims to take Americans back to the moon by 2020.

AFP - The United States blasted the surface of the moon Friday with two rockets on a mission to look for water below the lunar surface that could be used by astronauts on future space missions, NASA said. At 1130 GMT the LCROSS satellite crashed into the Cabeus crater floor near the moon's south pole at around 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) per hour, followed four minutes later by a shepherding spacecraft equipped with cameras to record the impact. Grainy thermal images carried on the US space agency's television station showed colder blue sites and warmer red sites on the moon's surface, but there was no apparent light flash as the rockets made impact. NASA said the blasts would kick up a plume of lunar dirt to an altitude of about 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) and produce a flash lasting about 30 seconds. Cameras mounted on the 1,965-pound (891-kilogram) shepherding spacecraft were to beam live footage of the initial impact as the craft flew through the debris plume, collecting and relaying key data back to Earth before it too plows into the moon. "The LCROSS science team is making their preliminary assessment of approximately four minutes of data collected from the LCROSS Spacecraft. Observatories involved in the LCROSS Observation Campaign are reporting in," the mission website said after the impact. "We don't anticipate anything about presence or absence of water immediately. It's going to take us some time," cautioned Anthony Colaprete, project scientist and principal investigator for the 79-million-dollar LCROSS mission, which is also the first preparatory mission of the Constellation program that aims to send Americans back to the moon by 2020. Colaprete projected it would take several days for analysts to evaluate the data and several weeks to determine whether and how much hydrogen-bearing compounds were found. Ahead of the launch, Victoria Friedensen, LCROSS program executive, said she was feeling "a lot of exhilaration, a little sadness." "I never thought I'd work on something as interesting," she told NASA television. NASA scientists will be looking at what spews out after 350 tonnes of debris is ejected from the cold, dark Cabeus crater, staking its hopes on water in the form of ice. The crater is 62 miles (100 km) across and between 1.6 and 2.5 miles (2.5 to four km) deep. "We're hunting for how water ice was stored and trapped in these permanently shadowed areas over billions of years and we want to find out how much there is," explained Peter Schultz, a professor of geological sciences at Brown University who helped design the mission. The mission comes just two weeks after India hailed the discovery of water on the moon with its Chandrayaan-1 satellite mission in partnership with NASA. Scientists had previously theorized that, except for the possibility of ice at the bottom of craters, the moon was totally dry. Finding water on Earth's natural satellite would be a major breakthrough in space exploration and pave the way toward future lunar bases for drinking water or fuel, or even man living on another planet. "This could be the place that we could go to mine water for a permanent lunar base," said Schultz. "It tells us something about how water was delivered to the moon and other planets in a sort of cosmic rain, meaning impacts from comets over eons." Friedensen said interest levels in the project were high because of the potential if water were found. "If we had it there, we could actually make exploration be a bit more sustainable," she said. "We could make fuel on the moon." But much uncertainty surrounds NASA's future missions to the moon, as a key review panel appointed by President Barack Obama's administration said existing budgets bar a return to it before 2020. The last manned mission to the moon, Apollo 17, took place in 1972.

NASA's moon blast called a smashing success

A spacecraft named LCROSS fired a 2-ton rocket casing into the heart of darkness on the moon early Friday morning, blasting out two fresh craters inside a larger one in search of hidden reservoirs of water.
The impact did not send the high plume of moon rocks and dust into the sunlit lunar sky as scientists had expected, but instruments aboard the spacecraft did record a sudden bright flash of light and the spectral lines of sodium and other as yet unidentified chemicals.
It also appeared that as LCROSS soared over the first new crater, it flew right through a high plume of vapor from the impact, mission scientists said.
"The spacecraft flew beautifully," said Anthony Colaprete, the LCROSS mission's chief scientist. "We saw the crater, we saw the flash and we looked deeper and deeper into the crater's shadow, but if there's water there, we'll have to see what the data tells us."
Like every NASA venture into space, the ultimate success of this one will be known after all the instrument data is analyzed. And there's plenty of it, for the Hubble Space Telescope and five other orbiting spacecraft from Japan, India and the U.S. were all training their instruments and optics on the event. Telescopes at 20 major astronomical observatories from New Mexico to Hawaii were also part of the mission's observing campaign.
Precision navigation
The flight itself was a remarkable feat of precision space navigation by engineers and scientists at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, where the mission was designed, built and controlled. And it gave the scientists their first-ever chance to explore material that has lain hidden beneath the moon's surface for billions of years.
At 7:30 p.m. Thursday LCROSS - the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite - aimed its Centaur rocket casing at the target deep inside a lunar crater 60 miles wide named Cabeus. So precise was the mission control team's aim that the Centaur hit just about 1,500 feet from the exact center of its 12-mile-wide assigned spot, and it dug an impact crater that may be 60 feet wide and 13 feet deep.
And when the brilliant plume failed to rise from the permanently shadowed crater, Michael Bicay, science director at the Ames center, speculated that the Centaur might have hit solid bedrock rather than the mix of smaller rocks and sand the scientists had expected.
Colaprete, however, suggested later that the debris from the crash might have spread out widely inside the shadow instead of rising above it - depending on its composition.
The predicted impact time was 4:3o a.m. Friday, and it came only one minute later, after LCROSS controllers, led by project manager Daniel Andrews, sent the Centaur rocket speeding to the target from 25,000 miles away at 5,580 mph. It was quite a piece of tricky space navigation.
After the Centaur's impact, LCROSS, its "shepherding satellite," was less than 375 miles above the moon's surface. And four minutes later the LCROSS satellite itself plunged on schedule into the same wide crater to make a smaller impact crater of its own.
Cabeus, the broad target crater, lies just above the moon's South Pole, where for 10 years scientists have been seeing evidence that rich deposits of hydrogen lie there - either as hydrogen alone, or as molecules of hydrogen and oxygen known as hydroxyls -or better yet, as deeply frozen water ice that has remained solid for billions of years in craters that have never seen any light at all.
Where's the water?
And that's precisely what this mission has been all about: to find out whether immense quantities of water do in fact lie beneath the moon's dry and lifeless surface. The moon has been bombarded ceaselessly by meteors and comets ever since it formed, and since comets typically contain large amounts of water, mission scientists reason that water indeed should be detected when they finally analyze the mountains of data from all the instruments in orbit and on the ground.
"There's water down in that crater, and we're going to dig some of it up," Colaprete had said at a newsconference Thursday. And on Friday, without speculating, he still insisted the odds are good that the cryptic data will ultimately show there is water on the moon.
LCROSS was launched from Cape Canaveral in June as a kind of hitchhiker aboard another spacecraft called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the LRO has been orbiting the moon ever since on an independent mission to map the moon's entire surface. It was flying right over the impact sites Friday and will continue gathering data from them on every orbit.
Ames officials had opened the guarded space center to the public on Thursday, and hundreds of space enthusiasts gathered in the frigid open for the night, entertained by free moon movies, informed explanations, and images of the LCROSS experiment projected on a giant screen.
When the debris plume was barely visible instead of spectacularly bright, the crowd - with some in sleeping bags and tents - was disappointed and many grumbled.
"It was fun to hang out with my friend Dylan, but it's kind of like I got up at 3 in the morning for nothing," said Bobby Howie, 9, of San Mateo.Read more: