NASA scientists have determined that your chances of being hit upside the head by a meteoroid are four times greater than previously believed – provided you’re standing on the moon.
“We’ve now seen 11 and possibly 12 lunar impacts since we started monitoring the Moon one year ago,” says Bill Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, in a story on the Science@NASA Web site. “That’s about four times more hits than our computer models predicted.”
The discrepancy may have something to do with an age-old problem in computing that apparently transcends earthly bounds: garbage in, garbage out.
“Our best models of the lunar meteoroid environment predict a much lower rate — only 25% of what we are actually seeing,” Cooke tells the article’s author, Dr. Tony Phillips. “They’re based on observations of meteors in the skies of Earth,” and those data may not translate well to the Moon. (Sort of like the space shuttle’s clocks don’t translate well from one year to the next.)
And for what earthly reason – besides basic curiosity – does it matter how often small space rocks hit a big space rock? The Meteoroid Environment Office offers this explanation on its site:
“Why it is important: The Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) eventually calls for extended astronaut stays on the lunar surface. Spacecraft, vehicles, habitats, and EVA suits must all be designed to withstand the stresses posed by the harsh lunar environment over this period of time. Meteoroids — and the ejecta produced when they create impact craters — are part of this environment.”
In other words, it gives scientists an excuse to use the word “ejecta” and you don’t want to get hit upside the head by one of these babies, because they hit the lunar surface with the thud of a 700-pound space vehicle and pack a wallop equal to 150 to 300 pounds of TNT.
The story includes an .mpeg of a meteoroid crashing into the moon, “An 8th-magnitude Leonid flash near crater Gauss,” reads the caption. “The movies play in 7x slow motion; otherwise the explosion would be nearly invisible to the human eye.”
Even with the slow motion, I had to play the thing three or four times before spotting the tiny little flash. I won’t spoil the ending for you by offering any clues.
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