Sept. 11, 2009 -- While the Obama administration considers whether to fund a planned U.S. return to the moon, scientists will be scouring the surface of Earth's satellite to search for a precious resource: water.
On Oct. 9, NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, nicknamed LCROSS, is scheduled to release a 2.5-ton spent rocket motor, which will crash into a permanently shadowed crater on the moon's south pole.
The rocket motor had helped put LCROSS and a sister satellite known as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, into orbit in June. LCROSS has been tugging the dead weight as it circles the Earth, waiting to be in position.
The LCROSS satellite as well as an armada of telescopes on Earth and in space will be trained on the crash site to search ejected material for signs of water.
"Whatever the moon has collected over the last 3.5 billion years in terms of water, organic materials from comets, from asteroids, from the sun, could be trapped in these pockets on the moon," said LCROSS project scientist Anthony Colaprete, with NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.
"It's a window into the past of the entire inner solar system, of Earth," Colaprete said. "The moon is right there. It's right next to us. We can go there much more easily than a lot of other places and make these studies."
NASA has been planning to return to the moon following the space shuttle and space station programs, but faces a budget shortfall of about $3 billion a year, according to a summary report of a presidential study team tasked to come up with options for the U.S. human space program.
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"Even if we don't go back to the moon, water is a principle resource throughout the solar system," Colaprete said. "The old Mars mantra was 'follow the water,' and really that extends in my mind throughout the entire solar system and the entire universe. LRO and LCROSS are the first directed, focused steps in that direction on the moon."
If successful, LCROSS findings may coincide with the release of early results of India's Chandrayaan-1 lunar probe, which was launched last October for a two-year mission to map the moon's surface and look for minerals, particularly ones tied to hydrogen. The probe was lost last month, but scientists say the mission returned some key results. Publication is pending.
NASA used information from the mission to help select LCROSS' target -- a large crater known as Cabeus A, located about 81 degrees south near the moon's pole. Scientists wanted a target that was fully shadowed to preserve any water but shallow enough for material ejected during the impact to be tossed high over the crater's rim so that it could be seen.
"We want to hit a nice flat, fluffy place," said Coleprete. "The flatter and fluffier it is, the more material gets thrown up in a very predictable way."
Observatories expected to participate in the study include Hawaii's Keck and Gemini telescopes, the Magdalena Ridge and Apache Ridge observatories in New Mexico, the MMT Observatory in Arizona, the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope and the moon-orbiting LRO.
NASA also plans to tap the amateur astronomer community to join the observations in a "citizen scientist" program.
"We would like to have as many eyes and instruments watching the impact as possible because this is the way we'll get the most data, the most information, as possible," said Jennifer Heldmann, who is heading the LCROSS observing campaign.
The impact is planned for 7:30 a.m. EDT on Oct. 9.
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