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LCROSS wheat from chaff?

On Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:14:44 +0000 (UTC), Rick Jones <...@hp.com

I was reading about the LRO/LCROSS launch on http://www.space.com. It was
saying that LCROSS will guide the Centaur upper stage into an impact
on the moon, which it will presumably watch until it too impacts on
the moon. My understanding is the idea is to scan the ejecta for
evidence of water.

That sounds all well and good to my peanut gallery brain, but then I
went over to the wikipedia entry for Centaur - it uses LH2 and LOX.
Does Centaur have facilities for a (verified) purge of the tanks before it
hits the moon? If not, aren't residual LH2 and LOX a concern wrt
"contaminating" their measuements?

rick jones
--
Process shall set you free from the need for rational thought.
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway... :)
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...



On Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:10:30 -0500, Damon Hill <...@comcast.netnet

Rick Jones <...@usenet01.boi.hp.com:



Yes; some Centaur missions leave the stage in a permanent high
orbit where it's desirable to purge the tanks in a controlled
manner. Just opening valves and letting the cryogens boil off
is essentially what happens. There's also a residual supply of
hydrazine for the ullage and attitude thrusters, and helium
bottles to vent.

LCROSS's own propulsion system will handle attitude and course
corrections. The stage won't impact for several weeks so there's
plenty of time to dump all traces of propellant into vacuum.

--Damon

On Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:09:40 -0500, Jim <...@cableone.net

They explained exactly how this works with an animation during the
countdown. Here is a link to a replay of the video on Space-Multimedia

http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/archive/missions/replay41.php

Jim

Discussion Title: LCROSS wheat from chaff?
Title Keywords: LCROSS  wheat  from  chaff?