Crash Landing on the Moon
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman - Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Aerospace Engineering Engineering Mechanics History of Science and Technology Mechanical Engineering |
| Learning Resource Type: | Reference - Article/Document |
| Media Type: | WWW |
| Author(s): | Tony Phillips |
| Description: | Article by NASA scientist has text, images and an audio file. Excerpt: "In 1959, a spaceship fell out of the lunar sky and hit the ground near the Sea of Serenity. The ship itself was shattered, but its mission was a success. Luna 2 from the Soviet Union had became the first manmade object to "land" on the Moon. see captionThis may seem hard to believe, but Luna 2 started a trend: Crash landing on the Moon, on purpose. Dozens of spaceships have done it. NASA's first kamikazes were the Rangers, built and launched in the early 1960s. Five times, these car-sized spaceships plunged into the Moon, cameras clicking all the way down. They captured the first detailed images of lunar craters, then rocks and soil, then oblivion. Data beamed back to Earth about the Moon's surface were crucial to the success of later Apollo missions. Even after NASA mastered soft landings, however, the crashing continued. In the late 1960s and early 70s, mission controllers routinely guided massive Saturn rocket boosters into the Moon to make the ground shake for Apollo seismometers. Crashing was much easier than orbiting, they discovered. The Moon's uneven gravity field tugs on satellites in strange ways, and without frequent course corrections, orbiters tend to veer into the ground. Thus the Moon became a convenient graveyard for old spaceships: All five of NASA's Lunar Orbiters (1966-1972), four Soviet Luna probes (1959-1965), two Apollo sub-satellites (1970-1971), Japan's Hiten spacecraft (1993) and NASA's Lunar Prospector (1999) ended up in craters of their own making." |
| Rating: |
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| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | lunar landing, space mission, space craft |
| Usage Tip | |
| Use of Resource: | Hints for amateur astronomers: Using 6-inch or larger backyard telescopes, you might be able to see the LCROSS impact flashes. For a split-second, the explosions will glow about as brightly as 7th or 8th magnitude stars. But there's a catch: "If we land inside a deep polar crater, the flashes could be hidden by steep crater walls," says Colaprete. "We'll know more after a landing site is chosen." |
| Difficulty: | Medium |
| Interactivity Level: | Low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | 2008 |
| Platform/Format: | WWW |
| Cost: | Free |
| Download URL: | http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/28jul_crashlanding.htm |
| Metadata: | IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
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