The much talked about event of LCROSS impact on moon, was successfully executed on October 9, 2009. This mega event had a lot of apprehensions and expectations. It may reveal some long awaited questions about the moon, which may change the history of mankind. Did we learn anything so far?
Moon: A World of Fascination!
We’ve managed to achieve so many things but the Moon has always been a source of fascination for the entire world. Since time immemorial, man has always needed to find out what that silvery globe held on its surface. NASA has managed to go a bit deeper in finding some of the details about the Moon with its various manned and unmanned landings but the recent LCROSS impact on the moon has had the whole world hopping.
LCROSS's Impact On The Moon: What Does It Mean?
Scientists have been inquisitive about the existence of water on Moon. The idea is based on the facts that numerous collisions of comets with the Moon, over the past million and billions of years, may have resulted in sublimation of the water from the surface of those comets and may have settled in the deep craters near the Moon's poles. It is therefore possible that water ice might be present in the dark craters in its polar regions, at a temperature even lower than -170 0C.
NASA decided that just sending probes to the surface of the moon was not enough. The only way to get these answers was by actively collecting Moon dust and researching it to find out the chemical nature of the dust. One way to do this was by impacting or bombing the surface of the moon’s deepest craters. This would create a cloud of dust that could be collected and analyzed for data. NASA decided to go one step 
further and used the LCROSS impact on the Moon to help in finding out some amazing details in a matter of minutes.
With this objective, the twin impacts of LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) and its booster smacked down hard on the surface of the Moon, on Friday, October 9, 2009 creating history.
{Image Source : above right : LCROSS Centaur: credit: NASA/Roger Arno; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LCROSS_Centaur_1.jpg}
{Image credit : left : LCROSS spacecraft :http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/360020main_LRO_LCROSS_presskit2.pdf }
LCROSS : The Launch!
The actual launch of the LCROSS was a huge media event. There were three launch opportunities as the bad weather had made the
sky a little cloudy. The countdown began at 10 AM EDT and was aimed at a potential liftoff at 5:12 PM. When the weather cleared, LCROSS and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, along with its Centaur booster was launched into orbit aboard the Atlas-V rocket at 5:32 PM EDT, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
{Image credit : This photo of LCROSS Launch has been taken from the video released by NASA on LCROSS Launch. Imagecourtesy of http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/}
Why Is The LCROSS Impact So Important?
The LCROSS impact on Moon was specially designed to ferret out would-be water sources on the Moon. Scientists have already stated that water has already been detected on the moon and the news was confirmed by the Indian Chandrayaan-1 Moon probe. However, unless a viable source of frozen water is found, it’s going to be very difficult to actually support a colony on the moon.
The main aim for finding water is that scientists will eventually be able to set up a Moon colony.The impact from the Centaur excavated approxinately 350 tons of lunar dust and created a crated which was about 65 ft in diameter and 13 ft in depth. This was the largest impact ever from a man-made object on the Moon!