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Lunar crash to create a 10-kilometer plume of dust

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London Times Online: The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will blast two huge chunks out of the lunar surface on Friday in order to have a closer look at what the Moon is made of.

The plume will be created by dropping the Centaur upper stage of the rocket that fired LCROSS to lunar orbit onto the surface near one of the lunar poles.

When the 2.4-tonne Centaur hits the ground, it will be traveling at 2.5 km per second, and throw up a plume of debris 10 km high that can be analyzed by instruments on the LCROSS spacecraft.

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Various: The experiment to smash part of a rocket upper stage into the Moon at high speed (as reported earlier this week) went without a hitch but did not produce a visible plume 10 kilometers high as expected. Vincent Eke,... Read More

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The Moon belongs to all of humanity and should not be experimented with on this type of scale.

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