The LADEE vessel collided with the Moon

Launched in September 2013 at NASA's Wallops Flight Center, Virginia, LADEE entered the Moon's orbit on October 6 and began conducting extensive research to help scientists better understand dust and Thin atmosphere around the Sun, as well as demonstrating the ability to use lasers to communicate in deep space.

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Due to the flight schedule requiring LADEE to maintain a very low altitude around the Moon, the ship's extensive scientific mission was brought to the end on April 11. At this point, NASA used the remaining fuel on the ship to bring it down to a very low orbit, only 2 to 3 kilometers from the Moon's surface.

The purpose of the trajectory is to bring LADEE towards a controlled collision on the far side of the Moon when the ship is pulled down by the planet's natural gravitational field. The far side of the Moon was chosen as the resting place of LADEE in order to prevent the collision from damaging historic landing sites from previous missions. Although NASA could not accurately predict the time and place of the ship falling, the collision was confirmed when the radio signal from LADEE did not reappear after it passed behind the Moon on April 18.

Although no one could see how the ship fell, NASA said the collision happened "very spectacular" . The ship is about the size of a washing machine that plunges into the Moon at orbital speed, it is heated to hundreds of degrees or even evaporates when it hits the surface.

Rick Elphic - LADEE scientist at Ames said: "At the time of the collision, LADEE flew at 5,800 km / h, nearly 3 times the speed of a rifle bullet. Of course at speed At this rate the impact cannot be gentle, but the question is whether LADEE will create a hole on a hillside or debris scattered around a flat area? Will it be interesting to see "picture" created by LADEE ".

According to NASA, one thing worth praising for LADEE in the final days of the mission is that the solar system and battery still work after undergoing a total solar eclipse, the time the ship enters the dark side of the Face. Moon, no light and temperature drop to extreme cold. NASA engineers feared that prolonged darkness could cause the electrical system to stop working and cause the ship to "die" before colliding.

Although LADEE has been lost, the mission still has some tasks that need to be done. NASA's Lunar Exploration Satellite (LRO) will search for the location of the falling vessel, which does not provide scientific data but will help NASA determine who is the winner in the contest to predict the collision location of Take the Plunge (Take the Plunge) was launched last week.

"LADEE is a mission of many" firsts ", the most important of which is that the ship has successfully flown more than 100 times the orbit at extremely low altitudes, although this is a risky decision but we saw evidence that this venture was worth it, " said Joan Salute, who runs the LADEE program at NASA headquarters in Washington.