October 10, 2009
The atoms in your body have known many forms: star core, drifting dust, ocean mineral, living cell.
LCROSS Centaur Impact Flash
Birthday · October 10, 2009
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APOD published October 10, 2009. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
This mid-infrared image was taken in the last minutes of the LCROSS flight mission to the Moon. The small white spot (enlarged in the insets) seen within the dark shadow of lunar crater walls is the initial flash created by the impact of a spent Centaur upper stage rocket. Traveling at 1.5 miles per second, the Centaur rocket hit the lunar surface yesterday at 11:31 UT, followed a few minutes later by the shepherding LCROSS spacecraft. Earthbound observatories have reported capturing both impacts. But before crashing into the lunar surface itself, the LCROSS spacecraft's instrumentation successfully recorded close-up the details of the rocket stage impact, the resulting crater, and debris cloud. In the coming weeks, data from the challenging mission will be used to search for signs of water in the lunar material blasted from the surface.