Moon Bombing Video: Watch NASA's LCROSS Mission Bomb The Moon (UPDATED, PHOTOS)

*Watch video and see pictures below*

UPDATE: The AP reports that NASA's LCROSS mission has successfully bombed the moon in the quest to find water in space.

NASA has successfully bulldozed two spacecraft into the moon's south pole in a search for hidden ice, but without the promised live photos.

First a 2.2-ton empty rocket hull smacked the moon's south pole at 7:31 a.m. EDT Friday. Then four minutes later the camera-and-instrument laden space probe made its death plunge.

On Twitter, users expressed disappointment with the moon bombing, many expressing frustration that whey were not able to see the anticipated plume of moon debris. One user commented:

Dear NASA, Now #lcross is all over I'm going back to garden to see if my veggies are growing bigger. It might be more exciting.

Watch a live video of NASA's LCROSS mission to bomb the moon below.

WATCH:

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Read more about the moon bombing on HuffPost here.

As we wrote here, the LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite) mission will send a missile traveling at twice the speed of a bullet to blast a hole in the lunar surface near the moon's South pole.

This isn't a declaration of intergalactic war: The missile hit the lunar surface at the moon's South pole, an area scientists estimate may have billions of tons of trapped ice.

NASA has released an incredible video simulation of what they expected the crash to look like. Watch it below, then scroll down for photos.

The actual impact occurred early in the morning on October 9, at about 7:30 am EDT/4:30 am PDT (11:30 UT), according to NASA:

The Centaur rocket will strike first, transforming 2200 kg of mass and 10 billion joules of kinetic energy into a blinding flash of heat and light. Researchers expect the impact to throw up a plume of debris as high as 10 km.

Close behind, the LCROSS mothership will photograph the collision for NASA TV and then fly right through the debris plume. Onboard spectrometers will analyze the sunlit plume for signs of water (H2O), water fragments (OH), salts, clays, hydrated minerals and assorted organic molecules.

NASA expected the blast to be so large that it could be seen from earth through telescopes 10-to-12 inches long (or larger). Any place west of the Mississippi River was a potential observing site, with Hawaii and Pacific coast states the best places to watch the impact. However, many reported difficulty viewing the plume of moon debris generated by the rocket.

For real-time updates, follow the LCROSS mission on Twitter at @LCROSS_NASA, or follow the life Twitter feed below.

You can also find updates on the official LCROSS flight director's blog. The official NASA viewer's guide is here.

See pictures below and read more on HuffPost here.

• • • • • • • • • This visible camera image, from NASA, shows the ejecta plume at about 20 seconds after impact.

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Comments

[Julio Vigoreaux JR]

05:17 AM on 11/19/2009

What about the side of the exiting impact. For example when a bullet enters an object, the hole on the exit is always larger.

[brittneylea]

08:20 PM on 10/11/2009

NASA wants to know what you think about Space Exploration: http://www.nasa.gov/myexploration

[KrautMan]

05:07 AM on 10/10/2009

The sheer amount of ign0rance and denial of facts displayed in all these b!tching comments here is staggering. Y0u guys sit in your warm high-tech houses, type up this stuff on y0ur high-tech computers and send it it via high-tech data-autobahns to high-tech servers in order to discuss y0ur totally unfounded outrage with peeps around the globe. High-tech, that for a good part was developed due to the space programs of the US and other countries. And you have the nerve to complain and to accuse scientists of all kinds of bizarre misdoings without having the slightest idea of what y0u're talking about? And all this on a progressive blog?

It's stuff like this that sometimes makes me really pessimistic about the human races' outlook. Shoo, off y0u go, come back when you are willing to admit the overwhelmingly positive impact that science has on all y0ur lifes. "But science doesn't legitimate atrocities like this!" I hear y0u say now. IT'S A PIECE OF ROCK. A piece of rock that endures much worse impacts on a daily basis for billions of years now. A piece of rock so big that we couldn't seriously hurt it even if we deployed our combined nuclear arsenals on it. And a piece of rock that one day, given we find the resources there, could serve as humanities stepstone to real space.

[Carolom]

09:59 PM on 10/10/2009

A piece of rock just like Earth is a lump of dirt.

Silly man.

[Jean Gerard]

02:41 PM on 10/09/2009

It's the spirit of the thing, the imagery, the symbolism, the total lack of awareness of arrogance -- plus, of course, the atrocious expense in view of the dire needs of millions of earthlings who are competely left out of these equations. And on top of that, the bland ability to ignore solutions for a world in deep trouble politically and scientifically -- nuclear proliferation and all that. Higher math?

[realworl101]

02:49 PM on 10/09/2009

Bravo!

[kforce]

01:49 PM on 10/09/2009

Quote of the day: "Where's the 'boom?' Where's the earth-shattering 'Ka-boom?"

[SUSANINCOLUMBIA]

08:52 AM on 10/09/2009

NEWS BULLETIN!!!!
THIS JUST IN!!!

NASA PLANS TO BUILD A WAL-MART, DISNEY WORLD AND McDONALD'S ON THE MOON.

[ladyfractal]

08:06 AM on 10/09/2009

I am a progressive. I need to say that before I ask this question.

One cannot help but wonder how people here on HuffPo would be reacting if it were, say, Iran or Brazil or Cuba or Venezuela that had done the same thing. Why do I get the feeling that this would have been just peachy keen with all of the doomsayers here?

Cheers
LF
Proud member of the reality-based community. Thoroughly embarrassed to be a progressive right now.

[Daniel Guffey]

01:13 PM on 10/09/2009

oh,oh, then ... What if instead they made an alliance and called it YATO?

Please stop making hypotheticals that make no sense, please.

[ladyfractal]

01:16 PM on 10/09/2009

What, precisely, doesn't make sense? Are you saying that Iran or Brazil or Venezuela *couldn't*, not even in principle, have a space program? Or are you saying that if they did have a space program they would never do something like launch a satellite to impact on the moon? If the former, why? If the latter, why not? Thanks for your response in advance.

Cheers
LF

[katooom]

07:50 AM on 10/09/2009

Not content to rain death from above in Afghanistan, the USA today begins a bombing campaign of possible Al-Qaeda on the moon.

From all we can tell, it is having about the same effect.

[ladyfractal]

07:45 AM on 10/09/2009

So, for all of you folks who were freaking out UTTERLY WITHOUT CAUSE, it is now 0440. The LCROSS satellite crashed into the moon *nine minutes ago*, altogether long enough that if there were ANY gravitational effects we would have known about them by now. Nothing happened. Just as we SAID nothing would happen. There's a new 60 foot crater on the moon at its South Pole and that's it.

Now, of course, I doubt that there is a single one of you lot who will have the intellectual honesty to *admit* that you all just made fools of yourselves by all of your screaming and crying about how "I'll never be able to look at the moon the same way again" or "if the moon is knocked out of its position by 10 or 20 feet it will effect the tides" or any of the other complete nonsense that was posted here yesterday. But just as those of us who actually *took* higher math and physics (or read physics for fun, or even just utilized Google) predicted, the satellite crashed into the Moon, nothing at all happened other than that a plume of dust was thrown up and that was that.

Move along, nothing to see here but your own red faces (if you had the honesty to be embarrassed).

Cheers
LF

[realworl101]

08:37 AM on 10/09/2009

Well I suppose you are correct today, but we have no clue what this could do in the future to any of us Or the moon surface. to your comment thus;
"But just as those of us who actually *took* higher math and physics (or read physics for fun, or even just utilized Google) predicted, the satellite crashed into the Moon, nothing at all happened other than that a plume of dust was thrown up and that was that. "
It doesn't take a rocket scientist OR Math Major to know that even if it didn't move the moon it just added rocket fuel and debris to your precious possibility of water didn't it?? So pour that in your reality cup and drink it!

[ladyfractal]

08:49 AM on 10/09/2009

Sweet pot-bellied Buddha! In a 60 foot crater! If there's water on the moon, it's locked up in ICE and there's more of it than just in that tiny spot that is the new LCROSS crater. For the love of Pete! I'm not a math major or a rocket scientist. I'm a bioinformatics major. A colleague from work and I did the numbers and it took no more than 15 minutes. My colleague was an electrical engineering major. It didn't take *either* a rocket scientist OR a math major to know that this was a non-event.

I'll ask you the same question as I've asked every other person. Outside your vague "in the future we could be doomed" augury, provide us with *one*, just ONE, prediction of the negative effects subject to confirmation. Just one. That's ALL I'm asking for. I have the feeling that you won't provide one, though.

Cheers
LF

[ramblingjohnny]

06:56 AM on 10/09/2009

Hey at least they wont bomb a wedding by mistake this time!

[SUSANINCOLUMBIA]

06:44 AM on 10/09/2009

THIS IS ONE GIANT STEP BACKWARD FOR MANKIND.

[SUSANINCOLUMBIA]

06:30 AM on 10/09/2009

After this morning's bombing of our beautiful moon at the hands of the US space program, I will never be able to look at the moon the same way again. I was alive when humans walked on the moon and I cheered for that event and the joyful way we engaged in discovery.
This is something different. This morning, in true militaristic American fashion, we will do violence on a pristine heavenly body. We will use our technology to blow up part (albeit a relatively small) part of the moon for the sake of seeing just how much we can exploit it in the future.

Am I the only one who feels a sense of outrage at this?

[ladyfractal]

07:48 AM on 10/09/2009

No, but like everyone ELSE showing a sense of outrage, you show absolutely NO understanding of what this mission was. The moon has 'violence' done to it by meteroites all the time. Not a *single one of you lot* has been able to explain why you don't weep for the moon because of all the impacts that have *already* happened.

Btw. this isn't the first terrestial object to crash into the moon. Have you been unable to look at the moon since, say, 1966? Oh, wait, you must have if you watched the moon landing.

Cheers
LF

[DivineDNA]

08:34 AM on 10/09/2009

Meteorites have no conscious thought 'beings', known as humans are suppose too. This is an act of aggression, etc. etc.

No affects from what NASA just did will show immediately - but there will be some.....and it will not be good.

Watch the sky - (and no, I do not mean sit and watch the sky today) for every action there is a re-action. That "re-action" will appear when you least expect it and or least prepared for it.

[bassman24-7]

08:38 AM on 10/09/2009

ahhh..the voice of reason does rise and can be heard above the cacophonous din of the, um..."rest"! Thank you, Lady F!!

Bassman

[DivineDNA]

08:37 AM on 10/09/2009

Good post and I am in agreement.

The earthly "beings" just keep prying open 'pandora's box.' There are some not so nice surprises in there.

[ladyfractal]

08:44 AM on 10/09/2009

What is supposed to happen? Why can not a single one of you lot give a *single* testable prediction of doom? It's just "bad things will happen". You will note, however, that those of us who understand both the math *and* the physics have made very concrete claims that are, in fact, confirmable with anyone with access to Google and 15 to 20 minutes to work out the math on a scientific calculator--which everyone here has access to since ALL Windows, Linux and Macintosh machines have calculators installed with the operating system. I cannot help but note that the doomsayers have not made a *single* prediction vulnerable to disconfirmation nor am I likely to see one.

Herein lies the crucial difference between science (what I and a few others are talking about) and pseudoscience.

Cheers
LF

[moutonnoir]

05:10 AM on 10/09/2009

Uhm.. to all the doomsdayers... Moon=very big.. The bomb = relatively small. It is not like they are going to blow up the moon, or knock it out of orbit or anything..

But just in case, you may want to stock up on plastic sheet and duct tape to help protect your family from the moon dust...

[jdrourke]

03:26 AM on 10/09/2009

Um, NASA...I have a quick question. Are we sure this is a good idea...? If it's not, at least here's a final laugh for the human race...

http://jdrourke.wordpress.com/

[the mean in meaningless]

04:38 AM on 10/09/2009

REPORTED FOR SPAMMING YOUR PERSONAL BLOG IN VIOLATION OF THE TOS.

[GotRights]

02:40 AM on 10/09/2009

We will be greeted as liberators!