LCROSS Impact

[Ullan]

Greetings all,

I am writing this several minutes after the impact of the LCROSS mission in the Cabeus crater. Aside from being decidedly underwhelmed by the live coverage, a few things instantly spring to mind.

To my untrained eyes, it seemed as if the impact itself was a failure. While the Centaur did crash within the crater, there was no visible 'plume' and the flash of impact the trailing craft was relying on to find its own trajectory (the 'flash' mode), was invisible on both the normal and NIR and MIR camera feeds that were relayed over the live broadcast. The comment of the panel as the feed cut away said it all.

'Could you comment on what we just saw?'
'It's very hard to tell what we just saw, I'm wondering if the instruments were, ehmmm, calibrated correctly'


Secondly, I was struck by the failure of communication between the Science and Flight station, which should have been working closely together. It took them over a minute to interpret and relay the simple command 'Nir 1 to OPR 9', with Flight asking for confirmation twice.

'Science to Flight, NIR 1 to OPR 9'
'Roger'
'Ehmm, Science, was that NIR 1, November or Mike?' (this confusion due to the NIR, near infrared, and MIR, mid infrared, instruments)
(voices from Science, and several from payload, almost all in chorus 'November, Flight, NIR 1 to OPR 9, November'
'Just to confirm, Science, NIR 1, near infrared, to OPR 9?'
'Yes, NIR 1 to OPR 9, November, near infrared'

This was just after the impact, where time was fairly critical. Worse the actual adjustment of the bandwith, which flight misquoted as 0.2 when Science asked for 0.1, so the actual datastream would not be beyond the bandwith limit and fail to be received by the listening stations. Another miscommunication shortly after that, roughly ten seconds before impact

(voice slightly frantic) 'Science to Flight, NIR 2 to OPR 10'
'Roger, NIR 2 to OPR... ehmm.... 10?' (too late to correct after this if Flight was unsure, because the craft was seconds from impact)

This was followed by the oddest message yet, literally one second before impact.

'Science confirming thermal signature in crater' ?? Did they only just then pick up the remains of the Centaur? What other thermal signature could they have been looking for?

All in all, this was a very peculiar end to a controversial mission. The Centaur was supposed to impact the surface with the force of 1.5 tons of TNT (Edit: my original article mistakenly quoted a different source measuring the kinetic impact force at 1.5 megatons. That would have effectively made the Centaur as powerful as the Nagasaki A-bomb. The revised information was taken from NASA data, and is deemed by this author to be correct.). The trailing craft would then descend for two minutes through the debris plume and collect data, while the scientists on the ground would look for the intensity of the impact flash to determine if they'd thrown up loose material or bigger rocks.

I can't help but notice, no flash, no plume... no impact?

[Ullan]

Yes, interesting how the image seemed to suddenly 'freeze' just as the impact was happening. But when they replayed it on thermal a few minutes later, there wasn't a trace of either a flash, or a debris plume. It's as if the Centaur burrowed itself in loose soil and simply got stuck.

[RL]

i dont think they really bombed the moon y'all.

[Besimi]

................based on these news,and peoples observations ,they didn't even bomb nothing. Was failure.


''WASHINGTON — Take that, moon!

NASA smacked two spacecraft into the lunar south pole Friday morning in a search for hidden ice. Instruments confirm that a large empty rocket hull barreled into the moon at 7:31 a.m., followed four minutes later by a probe with cameras taking pictures of the first crash.

But the big live public splash people anticipated didn't quite happen. Screens got fuzz and no immediate pictures of the crash or the six-mile plume of lunar dust that the mission was all about. The public, which followed the crashes on the Internet and at observatories, seemed puzzled.

NASA officials said their instruments were working, but live photos of the actual crash were missing. Some select photos should be ready by a 10 a.m. press conference, they said.''
But so far all NASA had was ''images on the way in" said Nasa spoksman Grey Hautaluoma

[Ullan]

Select photos should be ready by the press conference?

Do they mean they need a few hours for their CGI artists to actually craft some relatively realistic looking fakes?

This means, quite simply put, that the live feed they've broadcast was not a live feed at all, but just a prerecorded slideshow. And even if it wasn't, they'll now have a hard time proving to people with half a brain that the images they're about to present are actually real. What was it they didn't want us to see?

Honestly, is NASA ever going to get the hint?

[Marie]

Did someone or something neutralize this mission????

[Rocanon]

Correct me if I am wrong, but if this was a success, shouldn’t be all over the news on and on? With journalist and live feeding, as the do in other NASA events, It same to me no network want to spend time in the subject, unless we are being banned here in Canada

Love and Light

Namaste

[JIM4HOPE]

Please think about the moon and the effect it has on our tides and our eco system.And another thing is I heard Bob Dean state that NASA is part of the department of defence if so that means more than likely it was a military action not a science..

[Ullan]

We are now several days after the 'successful' completion of the LCROSS mission, and NASA has yet to interpret the spectrometer data. While that in itself can be explained away as a need to be thorough before going public with any information, they have finally revealed 'proof' of the Centaur impact in the Cabeus crater.

The photo in question is a singular still frame from the MIR camera which was being shown to the worldwide audience during the descent of the 'shepherding craft', the actual LCROSS craft. The exact moment of the impact was not seen, as the image suddenly froze during the live feed, showing that the data stream was either lost or corrupted before it reached Earth. That, at least, has been NASA's explanation until today.

Today the story has changed, and a still frame of the exact moment of impact using the MIR camera has been provided. It shows a dot of light, about the size of a pinprick, in the darkened area of the Cabeus crater.

Two conclusions spring to mind, and considering NASA's earlier story, I will leave you to make up your own mind.

1) The data stream was lost, as they reported earlier, when the activation of the spectrometers exceeded available bandwith, in which case this still frame could not have been captured and thus has been faked.

OR

2) The data stream was /not/ lost, but deliberately interrupted before reaching the live broadcast, in which case everything seen during the broadcast must be deemed as suspect.


Either/or. There is no plausible third explanation.

[simpleman]

BINGO

JIM4HOPE said:

Please think about the moon and the effect it has on our tides and our eco system.And another thing is I heard Bob Dean state that NASA is part of the department of defence if so that means more than likely it was a military action not a science..

Jim, I feel the same. Its been raining here ever since the impact. And I think this being a science mission is a cover story. I think its military mission and the reason for it is, as always, to gain power and control. I dont know what they are up to, but what ever they say, its backwards from the truth.