skip to main content

Lunar smackdown!

The SMART-1 crash landed on the Moon, creating a visible flash noted by telescopes like the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.

Written byPhil Plait
| 1 min read
Follow on GoogleGoogle News Preferred Source
Placeholder image

Newsletter

Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science news

Sign Up

SMART-1 smacked into the Moon last night! as I wrote yesterday, the European probe SMART-1 crash landed (on purpose) onto the lunar surface last night. It made a flash that was visible to large telescopes, including the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, or CFHT:

These are before-and-after images of the area, and you can see pretty easily where the spacecraft hit (the black dots are noise in the detector, and are not real). I haven't seen any numbers yet on how bright the flash was, or what science has been obtained by analyzing it. That might take some time. A good place for updates is the Moon Today website and of course The Planetary Society site. Image credit: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope / 2006

Placeholder image showing Earth from space with an alert icon and the message ‘This image is no longer available.’

Placeholder image showing Earth from space with an alert icon and the message ‘This image is no longer available.’

Meet the Author

Stay Curious

JoinOur List

Sign up for our weekly science updates

View our Privacy Policy

SubscribeTo The Magazine

Save up to 40% off the cover price when you subscribe to Discover magazine.

Subscribe