NASA Moon Probe Crashes Into Lunar Surface As Planned

NASA's newest moon probe met its end during a vaporizing crash into the lunar surface Thursday night.

The space agency's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer spacecraft (LADEE for short) made its planned crash into the lunar surface between 12:30 a.m. EDT and 1:22 a.m. EDT on April 18, after orbiting the moon since October 2013. Scientists expected the impact, predicting that LADEE would hit the far side of the moon on or before April 21 because the probe was running out of fuel — as intended.

The impact itself was probably a violent event. NASA engineers think that the loveseat-sized probe broke apart as most of it heated up to several hundred degrees. It's even possible that some of the material from the spacecraft vaporized during the crash, NASA officials said in a statement Read more...