Updated 1/8/17:15: According to latest news Mission Peregrine is in trouble. The spacecraft’s solar panels fail to draw power. If not corrected, the flight to the moon could not continue.
On the last day of July 1999, it shattered against the surface of the Moon automatic probe Lunar Prospector. It was not a crash, but a targeted end to a successful mission that lasted almost two years. During that time, the probe orbited the moon, mapping it, looking for magnetic and gravity anomalies, and above all, looking for – and finding – escaping hydrogen, a clear sign of water ice.
Even the final impact on the moon had a scientific mission. It was expected that it could further confirm the presence of ice, observable from the impact trail. That didn’t happen, but the impact served the secondary purpose of shattering a small capsule containing the ashes of geologist Eugene Shoemaker, one of the leading experts on the composition of extraterrestrial bodies. Shoemaker died shortly before the mission was launched. In the target area they named the crater after him and it was in this peculiar way that they scattered the scientist’s ashes.
NASA certainly meant well, but as Gandalf said to Frodo: even the wisest cannot see all the ends.
Twenty years later, the extravagant tribute turned into a small but profitable business. The American company Celestis offers
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2024-01-08 14:40:34
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