‘Crash Scene Investigation’ reveals resting place of SMART-1 impact
September 22, 2017

European Planetary Science Congress 2017 Press Notice
Friday, 22nd September

‘Crash Scene Investigation’ reveals resting place of SMART-1 impact

Observations of the Moon have revealed the final resting place of the European Space Agency’s first lunar mission, SMART-1. The spacecraft was sent into a controlled impact with the lunar surface 11 years ago. Although an impact flash was imaged at the time by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on the dark side of the boundary between night and day on the lunar surface, the exact location had not been identified until now. Results have been presented today at the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) 2017 in Riga.

ESA SMART-1 Project Scientist, Bernard Foing, says: “SMART-1 had a hard, grazing and bouncing landing at two kilometres per second on the surface of the Moon. There were no other spacecraft in orbit at the time to give a close-up view of the impact, and finding the precise location became a ‘cold case’ for more than 10 years. For this ‘Crash Scene Investigation’, we used all possible Earth witnesses, observational facts and computer models to identify the exact site and have finally found the scars. The next steps will be to send a robotic investigator to examine the remains of the SMART-1 spacecraft body and ‘wings’ of the solar arrays.”

The location is 34.262° south and 46.193° west, consistent with the coordinates of impact calculated initially. The SMART-1 impact site was discovered by Dr Phil Stooke, of Western University, Ontario, using high-resolution images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The images show a linear gouge in the surface, about four metres wide and 20 metres long, cutting across a small pre-existing crater. At the far end, a faint fan of ejecta sprays out to the south.

Foing said: “The high resolution LRO images show white ejecta, about seven metres across, from the first contact. A north-south channel has then been carved out by the SMART-1 spacecraft body, before its bouncing ricochet. We can make out three faint but distinct ejecta streams from the impact, about 40 metres long and separated by 20-degree angles.”

Stooke said: “Orbit tracking and the impact flash gave a good estimate of the impact location, and very close to that point was a very unusual small feature. It now seems that impacts of orbiting spacecraft, seen here from SMART-1, and also in the cases from GRAIL and LADEE, will form elongated craters, most of whose rather faint ejecta extends downrange”.

Prof Mark Burchell of the University of Kent, who performed laboratory impact experiments and simulated the SMART-1 grazing impact conditions, said: “It is exciting to see for the first time the real scars from the SMART-1 impact, and compare them to the models and laboratory simulations.”

Images

Image 1: Discovery of SMART-1 impact site on high resolution Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images. The field is 50 metres wide (north is up). SMART-1 touched down from north to south at a grazing speed of 2 kilometres per second. This image, with west illumination, clearly shows a linear gouge of 15 metres length in the surface. Credit: (P Stooke/B Foing et al 2017/ NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

Image 2: Discovery of SMART-1 impact site on high resolution Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images. The field is 50 metres wide (north is up). SMART-1 touched down from north to south at a grazing speed of 2 kilometres per second. This image has sunlight shining along the gouge, so it has no clear shadows, but it displays the fan of bear ejecta more clearly. (P Stooke/B Foing et al 2017/ NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

Science Contacts

Prof Bernard H. Foing
ESA ESTEC
Bernard.Foing@esa.int
+31 653945301

 

Media Contacts

Anita Heward
EPSC 2017 Press Officer
+44 7756 034243
anita.heward@europlanet-eu.org

Livia Giacomini
EPSC 2017 Press Officer
livia.giacomini@europlanet-eu.org

Notes for Editors

EPSC 2017

The European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) 2017 (www.epsc2017.eu) is taking place at the Radisson Blu Latvija in Riga, from Sunday 17 to Friday 22 September 2017.  EPSC is the major European annual meeting on planetary science and in 2017 is hosted for the first time in the Baltic States. Around 800 scientists from Europe and around the world will attend the meeting and will give around 1,000 oral and poster presentations about the latest results on our own Solar System and planets orbiting other stars.

EPSC 2017 is organised by Europlanet and Copernicus Meetings. The Local Organising Committee is led by Baltics in Space, a not-for-profit organisation that is supporting 25 members centred around nine Baltic space facilities for the conference. The meeting is sponsored by Investment and Development Agency of Latvia, the Latvian Ministry of Education and Science, Latvijas Mobilais Telefons, Finnish Meteorological Institute, The Estonia-Latvia programme, The Representation of the European Commission in Latvia, the Planetary Science Institute, Latvijas Universitate and The Division for Planetary Sciences of the AAS.

Details of the Congress and a full schedule of EPSC 2017 scientific sessions and events can be found at the official website:

http://www.epsc2017.eu/

 

Europlanet

Since 2005, the Europlanet project has provided European’s planetary science community with a platform to exchange ideas and personnel, share research tools, data and facilities, define key science goals for the future and engage stakeholders, policy makers and European Citizens with planetary science. Europlanet is the parent organisation of the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC), and the EPSC Executive Committee is drawn from its membership.

 

The Europlanet 2020 Research Infrastructure (RI) is a €9.95 million project to address key scientific and technological challenges facing modern planetary science by providing open access to state-of-the-art data, models and facilities across the European Research Area. The project was launched on 1st September 2015 and has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 654208. Europlanet 2020 RI is led by the Open University, UK, and has 33 beneficiary institutions from 19 European countries.

Project website: www.europlanet-2020-ri.eu

Outreach website: www.europlanet-eu.org

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Baltics in Space

The philosophy of the nonprofit organization, Baltics in Space, is to “Inventory, Identify, and Integrate” with a sprinkling of Inspiration to build a space product greater than the sum of its parts. The best resource in the space business is people. With an eye to strengthening the triple helix links (Industry, Education, Research), its planned outcomes are integrating Baltic-wide space events, compiling catalogs of skill-sets for prospective users and Baltic space project development with distributed teams and Baltic space education.

http://www.balticsinspace.eu

 

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