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  2. Crash, burn and be happy

Crash, burn and be happy

By thescian on September 4, 2006.

How would you feel after crashing a beautiful spacecraft on the moon? Excited and very happy, if it is in the name of science.

"We're very happy and very excited, the team is rejoicing," said SMART-1 project scientist Bernard Foing, speaking from the mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany.

SMART-1 had been orbiting and studying the Moon since late 2005 and would have crashed onto the Moon anyway. So near the end of the mission controllers tweaked its orbit so it would crash on the nearside of the Moon where the impact would be visible to ground-based telescopes.

Early indications are that several ground-based observatories in western North America spotted the impact. Astronomers at the 3.6-metre Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, reported seeing an unexpectedly bright infrared flash. "It was a big surprise - there was a beautiful, very intense flash," Foing told New Scientist.

Checkout the animated gif. It's a tiny flash. But being man made and on the moon makes it a ..er..giant flash for mankind.

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Well its exciting, but kinda sad actually -the end of a great experiment. SMART-1 had solar powered ion engines, which but for the need for propellant could have lasted indefinitely. Of course the propellant had been used up, and lunar orbits are unstable -they used the last of it to control the impact point. Now I'm sure the team members will be dispersing to new projects.