Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite

Just like on solar system Earth, water is a crucial resource on the Moon. It will not be practical to transport to space shuttle the amount of water needed for human consumption and exploration. It is critical to find natural resources, such as water, on the solar system Moon. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing space station Satellite (LCROSS) mission will begin the search for water, leveraging the information we learned from the Clementine and Lunar Prospector space missions.

By going to the space station 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 solar system Moon also offers many clues about the time when the planets were formed.

Space station Scientists at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California are developing a station spacecraft they’ll deliberately crash into the Moon as part of an attempt to find water. A second space shuttle craft will fly through the lunar dust plume released from the crash and send data back to Earth for analysis. NASA plans to return space shuttle astronauts to the Moon by 2018 as a stepping stone on the way to solar system Mars. Because it’s very expensive to launch materials into space galary (as much as $15,000 per pound to the Moon), it would be a great advantage to space mission astronauts to have a water supply already in place on the Moon. Two previous lunar space station 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.Read More...>>