Eyes Full Of Stars

On Friday morning October 9th, two spacecraft will crash into the Moon. The target is crater Cabeus near the south pole. The collisions are part of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission. The planned outcome of this lunar smackdown will allow scientists to confirm if water ice lies hidden within permanently shadowed craters.

Following the Apollo missions, interest in returning to the Moon became a low priority. But that all changed in 1999 when NASA’s Lunar Prospector detected the presence of hydrogen in the lunar polar regions. Most recently, the Cassini and Deep Impact probes along with India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter obtained compelling evidence that the hydrogen may exist as water ice near the Moon’s poles.

As with the return of the swallows to Capistrano, the evening bat flight at Carlsbad Caverns, and the regularity of the moon’s phases another predictable and recurrent event has permeated the realm of cyberspace. Perhaps you have seen it. It is the annual ‘Mars hoax’ email.

While the email content has several variations, all have a common origin. Following the historic Mars opposition during August 2003 when the red planet came to within 35 million miles of Earth, a chronicle of the event was created and re-packaged with no date. First circulated in the summer of 2004, the oft-titled “Mars Spectacular” email makes several extravagant and inaccurate claims.