Spaceflight

NASA is to invite requests for information from industry in the first stage of a project to crash a spacecraft into the lunar south pole. The 1,000kg (2,200lb)-class secondary payload, to be launched in October 2008, will be the Ames Research Center’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, LCROSS, designed to look for signs of ice on the lunar south pole. Its Earth departure stage would plunge into the south pole, creating a 1,000t plume, which would be analysed by instruments on the LCROSS for signs of water and other compounds.