page_title: Cabeus (crater)
section_title: Volatiles
hierarchical_section_title: Cabeus (crater) / Volatiles
caption_attribution_description: English: This mid-infra-red image was taken in the last minutes of the LCROSS flight mission to the Moon. The small white spot (enlarged in the insets) seen within the dark shadow of lunar crater walls is the initial flash created by the impact of a spent Centaur upper stage rocket. Travelling at 1.5 miles per second, the Centaur rocket hit the lunar surface, followed a few minutes later by the shepherding LCROSS spacecraft. Earthbound observatories have reported capturing both impacts. But before crashing into the lunar surface itself, the LCROSS spacecraft's instrumentation successfully recorded close-up the details of the rocket stage impact, the resulting crater, and debris cloud. In the coming weeks, data from the challenging mission will be used to search for signs of water in the lunar material blasted from the surface.
context_page_description: Cabeus is a lunar impact crater that is located about 100 km from the south pole of the Moon. At this location the crater is seen obliquely from Earth, and it is almost perpetually in deep shadow due to lack of sunlight. Hence, not much detail can be seen of this crater, even from orbit. Through a telescope, this crater appears near the southern limb of the Moon, to the west of the crater Malapert and to the south-southwest of Newton.
context_section_description: The south polar region of the Moon was surveyed by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft and a hydrogen signature was detected. Potential sources for this hydrogen include water deposits from comet or meteorite impacts, the solar wind or out-gassing. This crater is sufficiently large that the temperature within the shaded region is below 100 K (−173 °C). This would allow water ice to remain on or near the crater surface for billions of years without sublimating.
caption: The flash from the LCROSS Centaur impact.
exif: {}