back to article Moon orbiter detects pole-plunge hotspots in dark bottom

NASA has released new images from its spy satellite orbiting the Moon, showing the twin impacts at the lunar south pole of the iceberg-hunting probe which struck there on Friday. LRO Diviner thermal imagery of the LCROSS hits overlaid on a daytime Moon map. Credit: NASA Hotspots produced by the pole-diver craft. The LCROSS …

COMMENTS

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  1. Cameron Colley
    FAIL

    Slow hand clap.

    So, they did just what they predicted when they decided to change the course to make the impact hidden from Earth based telescopes. How very clever of them, not being able to collect all that useful data, but instead having to rely on the sensors up there only. Wow, well done with the predicted semi-success.

  2. Bilgepipe
    Flame

    No Sh*t, Sherlock

    NASA: LCROSS may have caused 'significant heating'

    Gee, I wonder if, say, some kind of impact or explosion could have caused this unexpected heating?

    Christ, how much do they pay these people?

  3. Bassey

    Obvious answer

    The answer is obvious. The depths of the crater, far from containing large reserves of frozen water, actually contains huge quantities of memory foam. This is fantastic news for the mattress-topper manufacturing industry.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Moon Goddess

    Huzzah! for the Moon Goddess has healed herself!

    Our prayers have worked! Ishnu-alah my friends!

    Praise the moon goddess!

  5. Brutus
    Grenade

    @ all the fails and 'No shit, Sherlocks'

    Ooh, you're all so clever! I'm breathlessly awaiting the results from your own polar crater exploration missions. Or copies of the well-reasoned, well-researched emails you sent to NASA explainig why their experiment was going to fail.

    Either will do.

  6. Cameron Colley

    @Brutus

    I cast your attention to statements made by NASA's own scientists here:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/29/lcross_retargeted/

    Including: 'He did, though, admit to New Scientist that the view of the expected plume of debris from the impact could be blocked by "a large mountain that's about six kilometres tall or so on the northern side of the crater", meaning that "the ejecta has to fly up higher before it becomes visible to Earth observers".'.

    I also point you to the AC's comment on that article entitled "That's just great", which nicely sums up the way these things seem to turn out.

    If I were to change the scope of a project to allow it to fail to live up to the brief I would, quite rightly, feel disappointed. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand when a project is disappointing.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Noooo.

    They were warned. The moon is about to shatter and rain burning death down upon us. These hot spots prove it.

    From a concerned Pagan werewolf anarcho-primitive.

  8. James Hughes 1

    @Cameron

    Well, the aim of the project was to measure the impact area with the incoming second probe, and with the probe in orbit. Since they knew there was a 6km high mountain in the way, if the ejecta was visible from earth that would be a bonus.

    I'd wait before the results are in before dissing the operation.

  9. Richard Pennington 1
    Coat

    Damp squib?

    If it was a damp squib, isn't that exactly what they were looking for?

    I'll get my lunar raincoat...

  10. Stevie

    Bah!

    Is this some sort of joke? The two rows of clour smudges are clearly identical.

    I'll bet those so-called "scientists" missed the bloody moon altogether and are faking it.

  11. J 3
    Joke

    ALW

    Oh, no, anthropogenic lunar warming has begun!

    @Bah!

    You need new glasses. I can clearly see the hot spot in the after impact row, a little below center.

  12. _wtf_

    Bah???

    Stevie, there are four quite plain little blue dots on each of the lower images. Take a closer look.

    Of course, if you want to beleive in a conspiracy, you could argue that they added those in afterwards. Once you beleive they are faking things anything is possible.

    Alien because you know they walk among us, the truth is out there, etc, etc...

  13. Adrian Esdaile
    Boffin

    Obviously no cricket in the USA

    If there had been cricket in the USA, they would have seen those fancy IR cameras that show how crap umpires are when the pick up the heat produced when a ball edges off a bat or pad.

    NASA spent millions to prove that a target object will heat up when hit by an impactor. Well done.

    In coming weeks, NASA hopes to conclusively prove, scientifically mind you, that the sky is blue when clear of clouds, water is wet, and the cores of active nuclear reactors are not good places to hold tea-parties.

    Seriously though - would it not have been more cost-effective to send a rover that could actually do a bit of scouting about?

  14. Stoneshop
    Boffin

    Hot spots

    Have certainly been detected under the collars of the concerned Pagan werewolf anarcho-primitives.

  15. Bilgepipe

    @Brutus

    I didn't think it was going to fail, I was dissing the fact that the exciting results so far have been "we created heat." Don't you think that heat from an impact like that is pretty predictable? Or are you just too smart for that?

  16. Ian Ferguson
    Black Helicopters

    The truth is obvious

    There was no plume, because LCROSS crashed into an underground lunar complex built by the Nazis who escaped there in 1945. The 'hot spot' is merely the hole in the roof; or possibly the launch of interplanetary V2 rockets aimed at London.

  17. andy 45
    WTF?

    @_wtf_

    The alien has vanished....now that's spooky...

  18. Brutus
    Boffin

    @Bilgepipe

    Well, actually, yes I am too smart for that ;-p

    How's this for an alternative outcome: there is little evidence of significant local heating. Now that would be unexpected and would raise all sorts of interesting questions!

    I don't think, though, you quite understand the point of experimentation. It's not necessarily to make exciting things happen, it's to confirm or deny your expected outcomes.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    An unexpected squib is better than a plume

    Most discoveries are made when someone says "that's strange" ...

    (Who said that? Simon Singh? I can't remember)

  20. Grease Monkey Silver badge

    And

    "Exploitable reserves of water would be hugely useful for exploration of the Moon and perhaps for space operations in general. Water could be used to produce hydrogen for rocket fuel, and this could be important even for operations in Earth orbit - it would potentially be easier and cheaper for spacecraft and operations there to use fuel from the Moon, rather than supplies boosted up through Earth's more powerful gravity and troublesome atmosphere."

    So they've wasted huge amounts of money finding out whether they'll be able to waste even more money. Lovely.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Playmobil Please

    All that effort, and only two little pixels of officially released data?

    Playmobile reconstruction please - I'm feeling extrapolationally challenged.

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