Friday, June 5, 2009

Spiraling into the moon for a crash....and some cool video.

In a few months the LCROSS spacecraft will crash into the moon, but first the Japanese are planning to splatter their spacecraft next week. The Kaguya spacecraft that has been sending back those amazing hi-def videos is ending it's mission on June 10 at about 18:30 GMT (I'll have to look that up for Pacific time). The impact will probably be too small to see from Earth anyway (at least with backyard scopes) and the moon will be just past full, so it's darn bright anyway.
The spacecraft is getting lower all the time, and here is some new video of the view just skimming over the moon's surface. The second video goes as low as just over 6 miles above the hills. Be sure to double click for a full size view, and bring up the HD mode. Quite a view!





| Kaguya impact page from JAXA |

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