Through infrared observations with its newly installed infra-red mosaic camera WIRCam, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope offered a stunning image of the crash of the European spacecraft Smart-1, a very bright flash on the low-contrast landscape lit by earthshine, an image that was made available to the European Space Agency moments after Smart-1 radio-silence had made clear that the mission had ended.
Beyond the media impact of visual "confirmation" of the crash, the image allowed to pinpoint the location of the crash, actually very accurately predicted by the Smart-1 team after the ultimate orbit maneuver a few orbits before the impact.
Cool . . . our very own lunar Roswell.
No comments:
Post a Comment