Seeking to prove there鈥檚 water on the Moon, NASA plans to crash its Lunar
Prospector spacecraft into a perpetually dark crater near the lunar south pole
when the project鈥檚 budget runs out on 31 July. The probe will hit the crater at
1700 metres per second, resulting in what mission scientists euphemistically
describe as a 鈥済ross deformation of the vehicle鈥�.
The collision will also produce a plume of debris, from which researchers
hope that ground-based telescopes will recognise emissions from water or
hydroxyl radicals.