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…impacting a permanently shadowed region of Cabeus Crater near Moon’s south pole. This would send tons of ancient materials potentially including water ice above the surface for detection by the shepherding spacecraft’s cameras and instrumentation. Having read that Centaur was chosen for this role because it was big enough to create the all-important debris cloud on impact, we couldn’t help remembering the “fat tank” label voiced by the space industry’s own “Who needs it” people decades ago. Now, like those who came to see they “couldn’t do without it” in 1959, the LCROSS mission designers had seized upon the “fat tank’s” girth as central to their goals. |