NASA launches 1st unmanned moon shot in decade

The liftoff occurred just one month and two days shy of the 40th anniversary of the first lunar footprints. The mission is a first step in NASA's effort to return humans to the moon by 2020. The two spacecraft should reach the moon in four to five days - or by early next week. One will enter into an orbit around the moon for a mapping mission. The other will swing past the moon and go into an elongated orbit around Earth that will put it on course to crash into a crater at the moon's south pole in October. NASA expects the dramatic moon-impacting part of the mission to be "a smashing success." It's a quest to determine whether frozen water is buried in one of the permanently shadowed craters. Water would be a tremendous resource for pioneering astronauts. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will provide a high-precision, three-dimensional map of the lunar surface. It will circle the lunar poles and, via its seven science instruments, provide a new atlas of the moon as well as a guidebook for future explorers. The second probe, called the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, will be aiming for a spectacular smashup that should be visible from the United States; Kazinform cites China Daily. See www.chinadaily.com.cn for full version.