NASA gives an overview of the mission,

Using a suite of seven instruments, LRO will help identify safe landing sites for future human explorers, locate potential resources, characterize the radiation environment and test new technology. LCROSS will seek a definitive answer about the presence of water ice at the lunar poles. LCROSS will use the spent second stage Atlas Centaur rocket in an unprecedented way that will culminate with two spectacular impacts on the moon’s surface.

Below are animations of how the journey to the moon and how the LRO will analyze Luna’s surface.

Here’s another one on how the LRO will orbit the moon and scan the lunar surface. It is amazing how much the orbiter will be able to scan in so little time

More on LRO

Orbital Express Satellite

A retired Russian General has claimed the ‘accidental crash’ between a Russian and US Iridium communications satellite was no accident. According to Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Leonid Shershnev, former head of Russian military space intelligence, the crash may really be a conspiracy – a US ploy to test the feasibility of controlling or disabling hostile satellites.  Source: Official Russian State-owned  News  and Information Agency – RIAN

You may have heard about this supposed “test” already (Above at RIAN, HERE on robots.net, and many other places on the ‘net I’m too lazy to link to). If not, you’ve probably at least heard that two satellites collided, leaving a ton of dangerous debris.

Does anyone else question the credibility of a Russian General (ret.) talking about a US conspiracy to take out foreign satellites in the State-owned Russian news agency? If you don’t, you probably should. This sounds like nothing but Russian propaganda, to me. For the hearing impared, it smells and looks like it, too.

Sure, a loosely related DARPA program may have existed, but let’s not take their state-owned word for it when they say the program’s purpose was to go out and destroy other satellites.

We’d probably never know for sure if it really was a secret US Military test. Remember,  just because the odds were long doesn’t make it impossible. It makes it unlikely. Sometimes unlikely things happen.

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