More than 230,000 miles from Earth, a NASA spacecraft hit a bull’s-eye on the Moon on Friday morning. Actually, two bull’s-eyes.
At 4:31 a.m. Pacific time (7:31 a.m. Eastern time), one piece of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite — LCROSS, for short — slammed into the bottom of a crater at 5,600 miles per hour, excavating about 350 metric tons of the moon and leaving behind a hole about 65 feet wide, 13 feet deep.
Trailing four minutes behind, instruments aboard the second piece analyzed the rising plume and sent its observations back to Earth before it also slammed into the same crater.
At 4:31 a.m. Pacific time (7:31 a.m. Eastern time), one piece of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite — LCROSS, for short — slammed into the bottom of a crater at 5,600 miles per hour, excavating about 350 metric tons of the moon and leaving behind a hole about 65 feet wide, 13 feet deep.
Trailing four minutes behind, instruments aboard the second piece analyzed the rising plume and sent its observations back to Earth before it also slammed into the same crater.
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