(image from ScientificAmerican.com)
I awoke this morning to the 'Today Show' as they were showing video of a missile being shot at the moon. My first reaction was disbelief, having no prior knowledge of this event. So, of course, I immediately jumped out of bed and "Googled" for some answers.
The $79 million mission to the moon was launched on June 18 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission was called LCROSS, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, and has several objectives. The satellite is meant to orbit the moon for a year to gather data about possible landing points for a future moon landing. Today (10/09/09) two rockets were launched from this satellite at the moon at a speed double that of a bullet. The first rocket was meant to blow 350 metric tonnes from the Cabeus crater in the Moon's south pole. The second rocket, sent shortly after, is a Centaur spacecraft designed to collect data from the initial explosion. The damage to the moon is considered very minuscule compared to the weekly collisions the moon encounters with space debris.
What exactly is the purpose of this mission? Scientists have believed for sometime now that there is water on the Moon's surface and this was confirmed by India's Chandrayaan-1 satellite mission on September 24, 2009. The impact is expected to eject debris from the moon's surface to an altitude reaching 6.2miles high and NASA hopes to find traces of water hidden beneath the Moon's surface. All of this leads towards the blueprinting of a space station on the Moon.
Where does this leave us? Well, first I would like to ask, who owns the Moon? As a fellow 'Earthian,' I would like to express not only the importance of the Moon's existence to ours, but the rights of every inhabitant on this planet. NASA, a privately owned corporation funded by the American Government has no right to decide for the rest of the world, or even those in America, that it is okay to desecrate our moon. True, the explosion really did no harm, but it's the principle of the matter. It's no different then Governments arguing over ownership of the North Pole. Aren't there larger problems at hand than who owns what? Shouldn't we stop to think about our effect on the most important thing to man's existence and not how we can turn it into more profit? Our planet and one moon are all we have. Perhaps this could create greater steps to space exploration and the discovery of another habitable planet, but this is our planet, and should not be martyred for some damn scientific experiment that will only lead to more capitalist propaganda. That is what I think. I am all for science, I quote it often in my writings, but just because scientists believe that we evolved from nothing doesn't mean we have to be nothing... man can still have morality, even if it is self-imposed.
References:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nasas-mission-to-bomb-the-moon-2009-06
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299118.stm
http://in.news.yahoo.com/242/20091009/1364/tsc-nasa-rocket-to-bomb-moon-to-find-wat.html
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2009/09-131AR.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1#Water_discovered_on_moon
