BOOM!

NASA continues its crazed vendetta against uninhabited planetoids. Early this morning the LCROSS probe smashed into the Moon at approximately 5,000 miles per hour. This wasn't an accident -- the goal was to use the impact of the probe's Centaur booster stage to throw up a plume of Lunar surface material, which the probe itself could analyze during the very brief moment it passed through the debris before hitting the surface.

They announced all this ahead of time, so it isn't a case of "it was supposed to do that" after a crash.

Why is there so much interest in what the Moon's surface is made of? Telescope and flyby observations have raised the possibility of water ice on or just below the Lunar surface in the polar regions (where intense sunlight of a two-week day can't boil it off into space). Water is useful for all sorts of things, including making rocket propellant and keeping astronauts alive. The more stuff one can find on the Moon, the less one must launch from Earth.

I understand the next fiscal year NASA budget will include a line item for one of these. Just to make sure.