Alien Anomalies

A lot has been written and discussed about this week's lunar impact study.  As a matter of fact Rachel Maddow (a news analyst) mentioned the event on her nightly show carried by MSNBC.  Of course she mentioned it with some levity but I guess that type of news coverage is to be expected...but at least she mentioned it.

So why all the fuss now?  Various space agencies have done this at least eight times in the past few years, so many times, that we should all be used to hearing about it.  I can't speak for anyone else but this particular mission just rubs me the wrong way.  It could be that as you mature you view life differently, question things more, and refuse to accept the status quo.  I don't really have an answer but I do know that this experiment seems to be wasteful and unneccessary.

NASA tells us that they're searching for water but they also claim they already know it exists.  So why do we continue to slam foreign objects into the Moon?  I've read articles by various writers that seem to think we're destroying relic sites and or evidence of past or present civilization  with these improvised devices.  I'm not sure what NASA is doing but I do know this. We need to have some type of procedure to tell scientists no.

Think about it. Aside from the fact we may be experimenting with and or recording data that has nothing to do with finding water.  What else are we doing?  It seems like we're sending shipments of electronics, fuel residue, metals, etc into space and then dropping them all off at the local rubbish heap. Is this the best we can do as we explore new horizons and quite possibly contact new life?  Is that what we are as a species, dirty, arrogant, and wasteful?

I would expect our scientists to be a little more savvy and forthcoming especially when it comes to space exploration and the way we should conduct ourselves.  Of course our behavior should be even more important if a universal community actually exists. So we really need some way to voice our concerns and put an end to activities that could negatively affect all of us...not just the few conducting the experiments.

I've enclosed some information courtesy of MSNBC about previous impact missions:

8 space crashes and smashes

NASA’s LCROSS probe won’t be the only spacecraft to meet its demise

By John Roach, contributor

NASA is aiming to make a big splash on Oct. 9 when its LCROSS lunar probe smashes into a crater called Cabeus on the south side of the moon. If all goes according to plan, the $79 million wreck will kick up plumes of debris that professional and amateur astronomers will study for signs of water ice. Such a finding would add to a rapidly growing body of scientific evidence that the moon has reserves of water.

1999: Lunar Prospector hits the dirt

Faced with the question of what to do with a spacecraft at the end of its moon-orbiting mission, NASA decided to smash it into the ground in a long-shot hope of turning up signs of water. Alas, the wreck of Lunar Prospector on July 31, 1999, failed to produce an "observable signature" of water, leaving the mystery for future missions to resolve. Few hearts were broken, however. The chances of a positive result were calculated at less than 10 percent.

2001: Mir ditched over South Pacific

After 15 years of ups and downs in outer space, Russia's Mir space station went out in a blaze of glory, lighting up the skies over the South Pacific as it broke up and fell to a watery grave between Chile and New Zealand on March 23, 2001. Some worried that the deorbiting would go awry, but in the end Mir was decommissioned just as envisioned. "It was spectacular. The best fireworks I’ve ever seen," Fijian pilot Neli Vuatalevu, who saw the station burning up in the sky, said at the time.

2004: Genesis makes a hard landing

The Genesis spacecraft hung out for three years just outside Earth's magnetic field, capturing atoms from the solar wind. On Sept. 8, 2004, it was supposed to parachute down to Earth and get snagged by helicopter stunt pilots before it touched the ground. But the parachute failed to open, and the probe slammed into the Utah desert at nearly 200 mph. A study of what went wrong determined that the gravity switches designed to trigger the deployment of the parachutes were installed backward. Scientists were, however, able to recover some of the solar bits from the wreckage for study.

2005: Deep Impact creates July 4 flash

NASA’s Deep Impact probe plowed into Comet Tempel 1 just as scheduled on the Fourth of July in 2005, setting off a spectacular flash display with a spacey flair. The smash was designed to reveal clues about the solar system's origins. Because comets form on the solar system's fringes, they are thought to contain primordial ingredients.

2006: SMART-1 disappears

In a scene that might make getting voted off the island in an episode of reality TV show "Survivor" seem like small potatoes, the crew aboard the International Space Station jettisoned what appeared to be one of their own from their orbiting lab in 2006. Actually, the cosmonaut suit was stuffed with dirty laundry and radio equipment - much to the delight of ham-radio fans across the globe. The hams tracked “SuitSat,” for several days before it burned up in Earth's atmosphere.

2009: China's Chang’e smacks the moon

China's Chang'e lunar probe ended its 16-month mission with a controlled crash on the moon's surface on March 1, 2009. The probe was launched in October 2007 to map the surface of the moon. The first images released created a stir when it looked as if the spacecraft had spied a crater somehow missed by NASA's Clementine mission. The appearance of the "new" crater was later attributed to a processing error. Experts doubt much was learned from the lunar crash because few scientists had advance warning of the impact.

2009: Japan’s Kaguya joins smackdown

Not to be left out, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency joined the lunar smackdown fest on June 10, 2009. JAXA's Kaguya probe was launched in September 2007. Among other accomplishments, it provided new data on the far side of the moon and made a spectacular movie of the Earth eclipsing the sun. As it neared the end of an extended mission in a low lunar orbit, JAXA opted for a controlled plummet instead of just allowing the spacecraft to crash on its own. That way, scientists could make observations of the collision.

There are also some interesting pictures that accompanied the article; you can see them here: 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33179060/ns/technology_and_science-space/?pg=1#Tech_SpaceCrashes

-- Edited by Humanoid on Thursday 8th of October 2009 08:14:36 PM