Shoot The Moon

The moon's been looking pretty cocky lately. This oughta wipe that smile off it's cratery face:

In an unprecedented scientific endeavor -- and what may be one of the coolest space missions ever -- NASA is preparing to fly a rocket booster into the moon, triggering a six-mile-high explosion that scientists hope will confirm the presence of water.

The four-month mission of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which will be directed from NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, is to discover whether water is frozen in the perpetual darkness of craters near the moon's south pole. As a potential source of oxygen for life support and hydrogen for rocket fuel, that water would be a tremendous boost to NASA's plans to restart human exploration of the moon.

I'm cool with this as long as they don't destroy any of the historic Apollo mission landing sites (and the fact that they're going to target the frozen South pole makes me think those sites will remain undisturbed). I just hope that this happens when it's nighttime in the Pacific time zone cause I'm definitely staying up late for this show.

(via)