The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
Then, four minutes, later the LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) spacecraft was also crashed into the approximately same location (inside the crater).
However, the mass of the LCROSS spacecraft was smaller than the rocket, and again nothing was seen by observers.
NASA scientists confirmed that the two spacecraft did impact the approximate 97-kilometer (60-mile) wide Cabeus crater near the Moon’s south pole using infrared sensors (which senses temperature, such as the heat produced by the collision of a spacecraft with the Moon). [Corrected spelling: 10/12/09]
NASA scientists at the Ames Research Center (Moffitt Field, California), who coordinated the mission, stated that the infrared camera onboard LCROSS, along with other such instruments, imaged the impact of the Centaur rocket as a “little white speck.” [Scientific American (10-9-09): “No lunar fireworks as craft crash”]
Anthony Colaprete, one of the members of the LCROSS team at Ames, stated, "We actually saw a crater, we measured its temperature." [SciAm]
Data collected from the mission is now being analyzed in the hope that signs of water were present in the clouds of dust that resulted from the impacts.
NASA had hoped that a debris plume of up to 19 kilometers (12 miles) high (but more likely around 6 kilometers, or 3.7 miles) would result from the first impact of the rocket booster.
Within the plumes, scientists are hoping to find such materials as water, salts, clays, hydrated minerals, and various organic molecules. Appreciable amounts of water would be very important to find on the Moon so that future explorers can use it for drinking, for extracting oxygen for breathing, and for extracting hydrogen for fuel.
The Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 orbiter released a lunar probe in 2008 that searched for water ice in the Shackleton Crater, at the south pole of the Moon. In 2009, NASA said its Moon Mineraology Mapper (M3) instrument, which was onboard the Indian spacecraft, had detected water ice. NASA now wants to confirm that data, and to see just how much water is contained on the Moon.
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
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