Fifteen Years Later, Scientists Locate a Lunar Impact Site

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By Nathaniel Scharping, agu. 

Excerpt: In 2009, NASA intentionally crashed a spacecraft into the Moon ...The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) was designed to search for frozen lunar water and other volatiles in the lunar regolith by knocking them off the Moon. ...The LCROSS impact kicked up a cloud of regolith containing plenty of water (5.6% by mass), ...But it did so in a permanently shadowed area of the Moon, leaving scientists unable to directly observe the crater after its formation. ...Fassett et al. ...researchers ...see the LCROSS crater directly.... The LCROSS impact crater is about 22 meters across, the researchers report, slightly smaller than the LCROSS team originally estimated. ...the volatiles themselves are young and came from outside the Moon—perhaps from comets, asteroids, or the solar wind—rather than from volcanic eruptions early in the Moon’s history. ...These data could be complemented by future missions, such as the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER). (Geophysical Research Letters, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL110355, 2024). 

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