NASA plans to blast moon in hunt for water

NASA plans to blast moon in hunt for water

US Space Agency NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has said that they would be crashing a small spacecraft into the moon to find out if it harbors water, which can be later on used for manned missions.

NASA said in a statement that this would be an early step in delivering the first astronauts to the planet since the last Apollo missions more than 30 years ago. This mission would be called LCROSS — Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.

This would be hitched on to the same rocket as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) satellite due to launch from the Kennedy Space Centre in October 2008.

Daniel Andrews of NASA Ames, whose team proposed LCROSS said in a statement: “The LCROSS mission gives the agency an excellent opportunity to answer the question about water ice on the moon. We think we have assembled a very creative, highly innovative mission.”

Associate Administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate Scott Horowitz added: “This type of payload is not new to NASA. We are taking advantage of the payload capability of the launch vehicle to conduct additional high risk/high payoff science to meet Vision for Space Exploration goals.”