March 8, 2006
DEMOGRAPHY AIN'T ROCKET SCIENCE
Spacecraft to Slam into the Moon (Leonard David, Space.com, 3/7/06)
Scientists are plotting out a “crash course” in learning what happens when a European lunar probe slams into the Moon.So the European spacecraft is suicidal.The European Space Agency’s (ESA) SMART-1 spacecraft—now circling the Moon—is headed for a planned early September impact with Earth’s celestial neighbor.
Posted by David Cohen at March 8, 2006 10:20 PM
But it's SMART!
Posted by: pj at March 8, 2006 10:44 PMIts Space 1999 all over again as the probe pushes the moon out of earth's orbit to wander freely through the galaxy.
Posted by: AWW at March 8, 2006 11:30 PMThat was a European production too (Britian's ITC), and after major media hype before it's U.S. debut, ended up doing about the same thing in the TV ratings as the SMART probe is about to do.
Posted by: John at March 8, 2006 11:35 PM"slam into the moon"
Demonstration of the technical prowess of the same people building the Airbus.
Posted by: h-man at March 9, 2006 4:45 AM"in learning what happens when a European lunar probe slams into the Moon"
Cheese curds?
Posted by: AllenS at March 9, 2006 7:00 AMNASA has done the same thing: after all the trouble and expense of getting the Galileo probe around Jupiter, they killed it so as to make sure they wouldn't have to keep funding the damn thing and could move on to new toys. (The excuse given was something about not wanting to take the risk of "contaminating" Europa on the off chance that something might actually live there and able to be contaminated.)
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at March 9, 2006 11:40 AMAnd now with Thursday's announcement, we'll see that NASA makes sure Cassini suffers the same fate, to protect this moon from human contamination.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at March 9, 2006 2:22 PM