NASA's bombing of the moon

[nomadrush]

NASA are planning to bomb the South Pole of the Moon on October 8th, and are actually asking people to "celebrate" the event with "Impact parties" around the world! Are these people serious?

Whilst NASA have at their disposal, some of the best scientific minds in the world (allegedly!) there is something about this mission that scares the hell out

Comments

[mevennen]

It won't knock the moon off its axis. It would take something really massive to do that - like an asteroid, and even then, probably not. Apparently the entire asteroid belt added together only comes up to ~4% of the moon's mass. A missile of this size won't even be noticed - otherwise every time they bombed shit out of Iraq, this planet would wobble.

One of the reasons that the Earth hasn't been walloped senseless by asteroid strikes (which do have a nasty effect on the local eco system) is because the moon deflects asteroids. That's what all those craters are. But none of those - much, much bigger than a relatively tiny missile - have deflected it from its orbit.

[mevennen]

Mind you, this:

http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/scitech/2009/09/09/spectacular-new-images-hubble-telescope?slide=1

might be something to worry about...

Oh!

[nomadrush]

How far away is that then and is it heading our way?

Ross

[mevennen]

Not sure! Hopefully very very far!