Just in case you might have been wondering, folks–here’s a shot of the moon, with annotations added, showing the target site of the upcoming LCROSS mission in which America gets its bomb on on the surface of the moon.

The target crater, Cabeus, is a pretty tiny hole in the moon, relatively speaking, but is a pretty large hole in absolute terms–about fifty miles wide (a hundred kilometers).  Anyway, the plan is to drop an enormous spacecraft on it and use thermal cameras, like the one you saw yesterday, to take a look for cold spots that might indicate a water or ice presence.

I’m not in favor of this idea myself on general principles, but hopefully it’ll go off without doing any serious damage to the moon…or to us, for that matter.

Related posts:

1. Thermal Pictures of the Dark Side of the Moon Emerge
2. KODAK CCD Image Sensors To Document the Moon
3. Hot Tip: Biggest Full Moon to Photograph Tonight
4. Pictures From Space–Three Foot Thick Ice On Mars
5. Pictures From Space–The Hydra A Galaxy