LCROSS Lunar Impactor Mission

"Really? That's high quality data?"

Well... for a mission that was shoe-string budget, and not designed to take 'pretty pictures'... yes, it is. More importantly, the principle investigator probably wasn't talking about the images, but about the *data* - spectroscopic, for instance, coupled with optical, etc.

"obvious... something is being covered up, even if it's just a mission failure."... Read More

Having actually worked with data like this, you generally *don't* want to make a huge media announcement the moment you have some data... Anybody remember Fleischmann and Pons? Do you remember them for giving the world cheap fusion... or for making an announcement to the media before having it peer-reviewed, and being made into fools? For a space mission, this is actually fairly quick turn around (more results are supposed to be released mid-November at a professional conference... you might want to look at the lag time for the MER missions, or even Apollo).

It's not remotely a "mission failure" - the hardware worked as expected, as did the software, as did the ground teams, and the ground observers. LCROSS hit right on target, and streamed back a huge amount of data in the short window it had to do so (remember, there was no recording possible - the mission could only send back what it could stream live, with limited power, across 384,400 km, during a brief window... and pictures were perhaps the least important data that could be returned).

And if it didn't see what was expected - that's the most successful kind of mission! If you got the results you expected, at best you confirmed what you thought you already knew. In short, you don't learn anything new. Unexpected results mean something new... and that means you need to be extra careful interpreting the data as well.

"Please tell us what really happened"

I think they will. But these folks are scientists - they are professionals at reviewing, understanding, and interpreting sparse datasets. They're not RSS feeds of unsubstantiated gossip.

In 1969 NASA (with help from Bell Laboratories) invented the CCD component that is now used in all modern SLR cameras. They have the best cameras on (and off) Earth. Their power and clarity have been demonstrated countless times with wonderful images posted on their own site. I refuse to believe that these crappy photos were what we sent LCROSS to ... Read Morethe moon for. I know, the other data is of equal or higher value. But after the media blitz that set the bar very high in terms of expectations, wouldn't this be considered a failure to the spectators that NASA took great lengths to involve?

I think you may be confusing "mission failure" with "failure as interpreted by the spectators". From the standpoint of those of us who've thought about this, or worked under similar circumstances... this wasn't surprising at all (I was actually amazed at the detail and clarity of the images).

You may refuse to believe these "crappy photos"... but how detailed an image do you want? Peak data rates (this is for returning *all* information - engineering, spectrometer, photometer, images, etc.) is 1e+6 bits/sec... that's about 122 kb (kilobytes) a second. A "crappy" cell-phone image (say 3 Mb) would monopolize the entire downlink then for about 25 seconds... while the entire period from Centaur impact to LCROSS impact is just 260 seconds, enough time, *if LCROSS was to return No Other Data*, for just about 10 cell-phone resolution images.

Start to see the problem?... Read More

You can compress image data of course... but you need to be very careful not to introduce artifacts in the images (these aren't for your family scrapbook), and of course you *do* need to return other data - a lot of other data.

Note further than even this highest data rate requires a 70 meter dedicated radiotelescope in the DSN. In short, to even get that data rate the LCROSS team needed the support of some very high-value resources.

The only failure I really see here is in how the public expectations were set... & I'm not at all sure that's NASA or the team's fault. They told the public exactly what they expected. As it turns out, the public got a terrific lesson in how science works - what you expect doesn't always happen. And that's when it gets really exciting, and really interesting.

If you want cool images and good graphics, video games are great entertainment. But that really wasn't the goal of a complex, expensive mission to the Moon. That's actually not a good reasons to run a space program (there are cheaper forms of entertainment).

Wow. I've only gotten through part of your web page but... it seems remarkably information free. If I understand what you are saying... you think that there was a NASA conspiracy to photograph alien ruins. Sidestepping this rather... outrageous claim, you think that this secret mission was *best served* by publicizing the mission as much as possible, to get as many people watching what these people were doing, and they then predicted an event which didn't happen, calling them into question still further...

...when all they had to do is tell no one, piggyback on a spent booster no one was tracking, to get data no one could intercept?

Forget about the science for a moment. Forget about the politics. The scenario you outline is exactly the *opposite* of what a rational group of individuals would do if trying to accomplish the task you imply.... Read More

In short, even at a cursor glance, your hypothesis seems to make no sense at all.

Water is... well, water. Frozen at -1... Read More° C is much the same as frozen at -100° C. It doesn't change the water. As to the temperature swings... there aren't any. To be exact, the place where they were looking for water is in the permanent shadows - places where the temperature stays cold, and does *not* cycle in temperature.

The really nice thing about science: the rules apply everywhere. You need to make sure what the limits and assumptions of your rules are... but you can test for that as well. Conditions on the Moon aren't that extraordinary in terms of what we can do in a lab - so yes, we do know how water behaves under those conditions.

Javier - she may be quite honest. When you look at the things people (adult, educated people) will maintain in the face of evidence, well... I wouldn't assume. Just educate :).

maybe this will calm you down, Savannah: http://astrogeek.us/hoax/

thanks for your kind help, there is no photoshopped jobbie,
if you watch this film all the way you can see its on film.
link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP6rEfZWnLE
at this time part in to the film 5:23
its just a tall part of the moon like you get in the Grand Canyon high peaks.

great crew, great science.

be fair folks...when 'we' designed and decorated your churches and office buildings you didn't call us names; if you won't support art and science professions... 'we' will be the ones breaking into your houses!

Let's do the math, kiddies. Ours is an average galaxy, 200 Billion stars, the best official guess at the quantity of galaxies in the KNOWN universe is 200 Billion galaxies, so, and stay with med this is where the high-level math comes in. 200 Billion times (x) 200 Billion = 4.0 x10^22 stars.
If even 1% of those have planets around them, that leaves 4.0 x 10^20 stars, now if 1% of those, say have water in some form, which seems to be the minimum requirement for life, then that leaves 4.0 x 10^18 stars with possible live-supporting planets. Now if 1% of
those stars are stable for long enough and produce a live-friendly zone, where the planets with water are located, that is 4.0 x10^16
stars.
So that leaves 20,000 stable stars/Galaxy, that have planets with water in the star's "Goldilocks Zone". Spread those possible candidates evenly through the Galactic "Goldilocks Zone" and there is a pretty good chance, at least two advanced civilizations would survive long enough and be close enough to contact each other, maybe not on the same level, but that is another topic.... Read More
Somebody please check my math and look up the Drake formula. There may be a couple more pertinent variables I need to include.

There's a lot more variables (in the Drake equation): the chance of life developing intelligence, the chance of intelligent life developing the ability to communicate over interstellar distances, and the lifespan of an intelligent, technological civilization. Not to mention the fact that most of the other variables are not well quantified. There's ... Read Morea reason the Drake equation is also known as the Fermi paradox... "if we're so right in all our guesses, where is everybody?".

When the original poster was talking about "extraterrestrial life", they really weren't speaking of the possibility it exists somewhere, but the fact that they believe it exists, it's here, and it's mutilating cows (yeah, now *that's* a good reason to cross several hundred lightyears or more...)

Great Mission w/pics of dark side of the moon. Final moments of LCROSS for public to see.

Speaking only for myself... I'd gladly pay for this. I'd gladly pay for this, and a lot more, again. Way to go, LCROSS team (not to mention LRO... no, we've not forgotten you guys!).