I do remember that someone landed a craft of some sort on an asteroid a few years back.
I have not really followed any of that kind of thing since the end of the LCROSS moon surveying mission, where they were crashing a 50 ton or something payload into the moon being followed by another craft with a camera on the payload. The had promoted this crash for a week or so before hand, saying how the dust cloud from the crash was going to be easily seen from Earth with the naked eye, and how there would be a plume of dust thrown up rivaling the size of the moon when viewed from earth.
It was set to crash into the moon around 8 in the morning local time and the news on the TV all switched live to the crash event, with the talking heads building up excitement and going on and on and on about what a huge impact we are all about to see and how we will be seeing this huge dust could in the sky around the moon for the next month or so, and how historic this is and on and on.
Then the time came and everything was working perfectly, the payload was headed for the moon with the other craft following something like 30 seconds behind. The countdown was on schedule, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... and impact. Then nothing, Not a wisp of dust moved on the moon. Nothing at all.
The payload had hit the moon at the precise time it was expected to hit. No dust plume, no anything at all. The 50 ton payload actually had pierced into the moon without the promoted or expected reaction. Now I am intelligent enough to deduce what happened. At least that part of the moon is hollow and the payload simply punctured the surface of the moon, going to who knows where and causing much turbulence and damage inside the punctured area. It is really the only way that a 50 ton kinetic slam like that would not make a massive dust plume. Especially when it had been promoted relentlessly and everyone was told to watch, how it would be something never seen before from Earth.
The next day the whole thing was forgotten and never mentioned again.
There was never an explanation as to why the dust plume never appeared. Never any mention of it. Even youtube has scrubbed the crash of the payload from their site.
They are hiding the fact that the moon is likely hollow, at least where the payload hit it. They have never addressed the no plume publicly with honesty, so I gave up on em
I pay attention, but only as time allows.
I will watch the crash tonight, since you told me about it. Before you did that I had no clue it was even taking place
The project is like many of these projects, in that it has taken many years. It came out of the European space agency as a concept in 2015 - which means people had already been working on it for years. That's kinda amazing. Many of these folks will spend their career on just one program/mission.
I actually got to help with a satellite's math. It measures the fluctuation in Earth's gravity. I got to go see it launch and my name was inside it in magic marker from the only time I was ever allowed in the clean room. The radiation will have long since destroyed the ink, so I can't fly up and take a picture. That was a project assigned to me as a grad student. I made no money, not even a stipend. They did pay for the bus to take us down to launch. I think we had to cover our own food and lodging. I'm not sure, as that was a long, long time ago.
That's as close as I've come to space.
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