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Cratering the
Moon ChallengeWelcome to the Spring 2008 NASA Quest Challenge!
Help scientists at NASA find water on the lunar poles.
Archive of Webcasts:
March
5, 2008 - Challenge Opening
May 9, 2008 -
Challenge Closing
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Just like on Earth, water is a crucial resource
on the Moon. It will not be practical to transport to space the
amount of water needed for human consumption and exploration.
It is critical to find natural resources, such as water, on the
Moon. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS)
mission will begin the search for water, leveraging the information
we learned from the Clementine and Lunar
Prospector missions.
By going to the Moon for extended periods
of time before other bodies in our solar system, astronauts
will search for resources and learn how to work safely in a
harsh environment—stepping
stones to future exploration. The Moon also offers many clues
about the time when the planets were formed. |
Scientists at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain
View, California are developing a spacecraft they’ll deliberately
crash into the Moon as part of an attempt to find water. A second craft
will fly through the lunar dust plume released from the crash and send
data back to Earth for analysis. NASA plans to return astronauts to
the Moon by 2018 as a stepping stone on the way to Mars. Because it’s
very expensive to launch materials into space (as much as $15,000 per
pound to the Moon), it would be a great advantage to astronauts to have
a water supply already in place on the Moon. Two previous lunar missions
-- Clementine in 1994 and Lunar Prospector in 1998 -- found indirect
but not conclusive evidence of water. Your challenge will be to design
a lunar impact simulator and determine the optimal impact angle to give
us the most information from the crash.
See the calendar below for
planning purposes. Prepare for the Challenge with some background
references to learn about some of the missions that have gone before.
A Educators' Guide is available in MS
Word and .pdf formats. To
browse additional information about this mission and read news as it
breaks, visit the main LCROSS site, http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov
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