LCROSS : failure or fake ?
Over the years NASA has released thousands of photos of the Moon which appear to have been tampered with. Conversations between the Apollo astronauts and Earth were scripted and censored. Transcripts of the conversations the astronauts had amongst themselves when out of contact with Earth reveal intriguing evidence of some very anomalous phenomena, which somehow NASA overlooked and made public ( although the original tapes have somehow got 'lost')
Now we have the LCROSS video. The image we were presented with shows a not-very-high resolution picture of the crater which doesn't get any sharper as it gets closer. Curiously, perhaps crucially, the perspective doesn't change either.
Once the 'shepherd' stage gets close to the surface the screen switches to the infra red camera, which can barely diffferentiate anything, and the control room. When it cuts back to the visual camera there's just blurred blackness and a a very indistinct image of a crater - then impact.
What we definitely do not see is the miles-high debris plume. NASA was urging amateur astronomers to observe the impact, promising easily visible results. Yet there was nothing, and NASA are now backtracking,playing down their previous emphasis on visual evidence and playing up the importance of other instruments.
The IR camera didn't reveal any debris either, just a square of pixels supposed to be the Centaur crater. In the control room a female voice announces confirmation of the IR crater image , but with a questioning intonation and a hesitant delivery, as if she's being fed something over the headphones rather than seeing it herself.
I would contend that the whole thing was bogus. The visual camera was a rostrum camera zooming in on a two-dimensional photograph of Cabeus. The IR image wasn't even that good. Either image of the alleged impact crater could be anything anywhere.
If it's all genuine and something really did go wrong then NASA have just wasted 79 000 000 dollars on crap cameras and a duff idea. Until 2 weeks ago the chosen impact site was Cabeus A, more easily visible from Earth and with definite hydrogen traces. So why change it?
I have no definite suggestions as to exactly what NASA was trying to conceal or obfuscate this time but whatever it is , they did a really bad job of it.
Over the years NASA has released thousands of photos of the Moon which appear to have been tampered with. Conversations between the Apollo astronauts and Earth were scripted and censored. Transcripts of the conversations the astronauts had amongst themselves when out of contact with Earth reveal intriguing evidence of some very anomalous phenomena, which somehow NASA overlooked and made public ( although the original tapes have somehow got 'lost')
Now we have the LCROSS video. The image we were presented with shows a not-very-high resolution picture of the crater which doesn't get any sharper as it gets closer. Curiously, perhaps crucially, the perspective doesn't change either.
Once the 'shepherd' stage gets close to the surface the screen switches to the infra red camera, which can barely diffferentiate anything, and the control room. When it cuts back to the visual camera there's just blurred blackness and a a very indistinct image of a crater - then impact.
What we definitely do not see is the miles-high debris plume. NASA was urging amateur astronomers to observe the impact, promising easily visible results. Yet there was nothing, and NASA are now backtracking,playing down their previous emphasis on visual evidence and playing up the importance of other instruments.
The IR camera didn't reveal any debris either, just a square of pixels supposed to be the Centaur crater. In the control room a female voice announces confirmation of the IR crater image , but with a questioning intonation and a hesitant delivery, as if she's being fed something over the headphones rather than seeing it herself.
I would contend that the whole thing was bogus. The visual camera was a rostrum camera zooming in on a two-dimensional photograph of Cabeus. The IR image wasn't even that good. Either image of the alleged impact crater could be anything anywhere.
If it's all genuine and something really did go wrong then NASA have just wasted 79 000 000 dollars on crap cameras and a duff idea. Until 2 weeks ago the chosen impact site was Cabeus A, more easily visible from Earth and with definite hydrogen traces. So why change it?
I have no definite suggestions as to exactly what NASA was trying to conceal or obfuscate this time but whatever it is , they did a really bad job of it.