Shoot the Moon!
Watch live online at: http://www.explo.tv
October 9th, 2009 at 4:10am, PDT*

Is water ice present or absent in a crater near the moon’s polar region? The Exploratorium presents a live webcast of the LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observing and Sensing Satellite) mission, streamed from the Lick Observatory, on Friday, October 9 at 4:10am. LCROSS is a NASA mission investigating the presence of water ice. The Exploratorium Web team will cover the mission, the explosion on the moon, and the plume of matter that will shoot 10 kilometers into the air from the moon’s surface, visible from Earth! We will see the impact from the 36 inch telescope of the Lick Observatory — the flash of the plume will last a few minutes. The webcast will be preceded by hands-on experiments, including a crater made by throwing a ball bearing into tray of table salt (in slow motion.) Watch live online at http://www.explo.tv as the events unfold.

*Time and date subject to change; please check www.explo.tv for the latest information.

NASA’s LCROSS mission is seeking a definitive answer. Join Exploratorium staff for a special Webcast featuring live coverage of LCROSS crashing into the moon! We’ll watch the explosion and investigate how this intentional crash could reveal the existence of water ice.

The webcast will also be streamed live into Second Life, with a viewing event at the amphitheater on Exploratorium Island. Complete details at http://www.exploratorium.edu/worlds/secondlife.

Connectivity between the Lick Observatory and the Exploratorium is provided by CENIC, the nonprofit company behind the California Research & Education Network — 2,900 miles of fiber-optic cable that runs throughout California and provides ultra-high-performance networking to the Golden State’s research and education institutions, from kindergarten to post-graduate school. For more information, visit www.cenic.org.