3, 2, 1, LIFT OFF!!!!

Today, the LCROSS project blasted off the earth and hurtled itself towards the moon. in percisily 111 days, this project will crash itself into the moon and move no longer. LCROSS stands for 'Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite' (apparently they could not just call it LCOSS...). The purpose of this craft is to hit a part of the moon that has never seen the sun. This permanently shadowed spot is in a crater at one of the two poles of the moon. The theory is that if a spot has never seen the sun, if there is any water (in the form of ice) on the moon, then it would be frozen in a spot that has never seen sunlight and thus has never had a chance to evaporate. According to NASA's website, "the identification of water is very important to the future of human activities on the Moon" (a.k.a for deciding whether or not we'll create a lunar habitat). Beyond just sensing for water-ice, the LCROSS will also look for hydrocarbons and hydrated materials.

Another speical aspect about this project, is that it was spearheaded by a group here at Ames, where I work, so it was quite exciting to watch it launch today. To be more specific, our website says that Ames will be "managing the mission, conducting mission operations, and has developed the payload instruments" in partnership with Northrop Grumman, who built the actual spacecraft. Another cool thing about this craft can be found in the design, because it uses existing NASA technologies as well as off-the-shelf parts. Thus, this is a low-cost, quick project. It only took 3 years from proposal to launch. For those not familiar with the NASA time line, that is fast!

You should check out the video on this page: http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/ to learn more about the project.

In other news, another boy, Joe, a senior in high school, semi-joined our lab group yesterday. He will be working on a totally different project, but will be sharing the space with Kunal and me. This is his third summer here and he knows lots of people, which is great!

And...we passed our lab safety inspection today after 3 hours of frantic cleanup. Yay!