teknutzit.com

It’s marketing the electric city car for people who want an electric vehicle for daily commuting needs, able to do errands and daily driving, but not long trips.

The Think City is a highway-capable all-electric car, able to go about 60 miles per hour and a distance of about 100 miles. It’s a small two-door sedan with a hatchback.

The company on Thursday said that it has exited court protection in its base country of Norway and secured an additional $47 million in equity. Investors include EnerDel, which supplies batteries to Think, as well as production partner Valmet Automotive and Norwegian government investment fund Investinor.

“This means we can re-start production of the Think City as soon as possible,” said CEO Richard Canny in a statement.

Think plans to make the car available to European consumers by the end of the year. It is also hoping to manufacture Think City cars in the U.S. for U.S. consumers.

(Credit:
Think Global)

The company had to halt production when it ran out of money late last year, sending it to Norway’s equivalent of bankruptcy protection.

In addition to selling cars, Think is looking at licensing its electric powertrain, which has been under development for years, to third parties.

The Think City to go back into production ‘as soon as possible.’

The car will be manufactured by Valmet in Finland alongside Porsche Boxsters and Cayman sports cars. Think will close its existing production facility in Norway, which will lead to the elimination of 85 jobs.

Electric car maker Think has gotten a new financial lease on life, allowing it to begin production of its Think City car.

Still, Apple said it’s not like AT&T is an innocent bystander.

As for Google’s part, its decision to redact a key portion of its letter to the FCC will raise many eyebrows. The company asked the FCC to redact its part of its answer to the FCC’s because “the redaction information relates specifically to private business discussions between Apple and Google and, as such, it constitutes commercial data ‘which would customarily be guarded from competitors’…The Internet service industry is highly competitive, and the redacted material relates to business and operations of Google, warranting protection from disclosure under the commission’s rules,” Google said in a letter to the FCC asking for confidential treatment.

“There is a provision in Apple’s agreement with AT&T that obligates Apple not to include functionality in any Apple phone that enables a customer to use AT&T’s cellular network service to originate or terminate a VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) session without obtaining AT&T’s permission. Apple honors this obligation, in addition to respecting AT&T’s customer terms of service, which, for example, prohibit an AT&T customer from using AT&T’s cellular service to redirect a TV signal to an iPhone. From time to time, AT&T has expressed concerns regarding network efficiency and potential network congestion associated with certain applications, and Apple takes such concerns into consideration,” Apple said in its statement.

Apple, for its part, claimed that the application was never actually rejected. “Contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application and continues to study it. The application has not been approved because, as submitted for review, it appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile-telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging, and voice mail,” Apple said in a statement.

AT&T told federal regulators on Friday that it played no part in Apple’s decision to keep the Google Voice application from the App Store, while Apple said it never actually rejected the application.

In response to inquiries from the Federal Communications Commission, AT&T’s Jim Cicconi, senior executive vice president for external and legislative affairs, told the agency, “Let me state unequivocally: AT&T had no role in any decision by Apple to not accept the Google Voice application for inclusion in the Apple App Store.”

Skype, perhaps the most well-known VoIP service, seized upon part of AT&T’s letter that promised a review of policies regarding VoIP apps running on 3G network as a hopeful sign that Skype would soon be allowed to work on cellular networks.

“We welcome AT&T’s willingness to take a fresh look at authorizing VoIP capabilities on the iPhone over AT&T’s 3G network,” Skype said in a statement e-mailed to reporters. “Skype hopes this is a step forward in enabling consumers to be able to use Skype together with their iPhones and 3G connections and looks forward to hearing more about any potential change to AT&T’s policy, in connection with the pending FCC proceeding related to the Skype petition.”

Updated at 3 p.m. PDT with additional information and background.

Google also filed a letter in response to the FCC inquiry but redacted a significant portion of that letter when releasing it to the media. A PDF copy can be found here.

Suspicion immediately fell upon AT&T after the Google Voice application did not make it through the approval process, based on the fact that the application lets users bypass hefty rates on international calls. AT&T has also been believed to be behind the delay or rejection of several other applications that could have placed a strain on its network, such as Sling Media’s SlingPlayer Mobile application.

“AT&T was not asked about the matter by Apple at any time, nor did we offer any view one way or the other. More broadly, AT&T does not own, operate, or control the Apple App Store, and is not typically consulted regarding the approval or rejection of applications for the App Store, or informed when an application is approved or rejected,” Cicconi said in the letter, a PDF copy of which can be found here.

Google Voice, which allows users to receive calls placed to a single telephone number in multiple places and make cheap international calls, was deemed unfit for App Store inclusion in July, after it was released for BlackBerry and Android smartphones. Several days after the story broke, the FCC requested that AT&T, Apple, and Google all comment on what led to the exclusion of Google Voice.

But AT&T said it has little influence over the approval process.

Georgens’ storage roots go back to the early to mid-1990s at EMC, where he was tapped to develop a midrange storage product to complement the Symmetrix line and exploit the growing Windows storage opportunity. That project was torpedoed internally, and Georgens went on to take on the storage business at LSI. EMC subsequently bought Data General, jettisoned DG’s server business, but propelled Clariion to its current position of dominance in the midrange.

Now is a pivotal time in NetApp’s history. NetApp has successfully transitioned from NAS-only to a broader range of storage and data management software products. And it is the only major independent and publicly held storage company left standing. STK was acquired by Sun. EMC has diversified to the point where it now calls itself an IT infrastructure player. That singular position in the eyes of some makes NetApp a takeover target. Here’s why I think a takeover of NetApp is now less likely.

NetApp’s new CEO is Tom Georgens. Georgens steps in as Dan Warmenhoven, NetApp’s CEO since 1994, moves on to the position of chairman of the board and a partnership development role under the direction of Georgens.

Georgens didn’t go to NetApp to sell the company. He went, I believe, because he wanted continue on NetApp’s growth trajectory established years ago by Warmenhoven, Tom Mendoza, and Hitz. Selling would be letting someone else win. That’s not in character for Georgens.

Tom Georgens

At LSI, Georgens surrounded himself with some very able executives who helped him establish the Engenio storage brand as the dominant OEM storage play, selling to the likes of IBM, STK, and Sun. He attempted to take Engenio public, but pulled back when both he and the executives at LSI decided that they couldn’t get what they believed to be the true value of Engenio via an IPO. Not long thereafter, NetApp came calling. Georgens stepped in and later took on the position of COO, a move many analysts interpreted as one that placed him next in line for the CEO spot.

How do I know? This may sound a bit odd but Georgens and I both participate in a not well-known activity called radiosport. Radiosport is practiced by ham radio operators worldwide. On certain weekends during the year, ham radio contestants try to make as many contacts with other hams in as many countries as they can during a 48-hour period. I do it because I’ve been a ham since my teen years and it’s still fun to copy Morse code at something like 35 words per minute. Georgens probably enjoys this, too, but he’s in radiosport to take all the marbles. Unlike me, Georgens is a world-class competitor. He has won numerous worldwide competitions, often from a station on the island of Barbados, and holds several North American records. In addition, he has represented the United States in the World Radiosport Team Championships.

Georgens hates to lose. Selling-out now would be tantamount to losing.

NetApp co-founder Dave Hitz tells us that one of Warmenhoven’s personal goals has been to retire at age 60. He’s one year away from that milestone. Rather than continue to lead NetApp into a new phase that will be focused on scalable NAS, virtualization, and cloud computing, Warmenhoven has decided that Georgens’ time has come.

So what, you say? Try to send and receive high-speed code for 48 hours with only occasional short breaks and maybe an hour of sleep in between. It takes dedication and an absolute desire to win to match Georgens’ achievements.

Warmenhoven’s accomplishments were many, but he may be remembered most for turning the small niche-market opportunity that NAS once was as a dedicated file server attached to a LAN into the major networked storage platform NAS has become. Along the way, he built NetApp up to a 3.4 billion dollar company with 8,000-plus employees focused on storage.

(Credit:
NetApp)

• Emerging market sales were $474 million. Lenovo said it is targeting Latin America, Russia and Turkey as key countries. The company added that it needs to become more of a consumer player in these markets.

• Sales in China in the fiscal first quarter, which ended June 30, were $1.7 billion, or 48 percent of the total. Lenovo has a 28.6 percent market share in China.

This was originally published at ZDNet’s Between the Lines.

Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing said the plan is to “continue to extend our leadership in China, strive to restore profitability in mature markets, and also seize opportunities in emerging markets and the transactional space.”

By the numbers:

The company reported a net loss of $16 million, or 18 cents a share, in the first quarter, on revenue of $3.5 billion. Lenovo, which remains tethered to the commercial market, has been restructuring to cut costs. In addition, Lenovo remains a tale of two companies. The company leads in China and is extending PCs to the countryside and leveraging 3G mobile adoption. However, Lenovo has struggled in mature markets such as the U.S. and Europe.

• Notebook computers are 64 percent of Lenovo’s sales.

• Mature market sales were $1.3 billion, 38 percent of the total in the first quarter.

(Credit:
Larry Dignan/ZDNet)

(Credit:
Larry Dignan/ZDNet)

Lenovo reported a net loss for its fiscal first quarter as revenue skidded 18 percent because of weak enterprise spending.

As for the outlook, Lenovo said that it expects enterprise spending to remain weak in its second fiscal quarter, but will continue to cut costs to restore profitability.

Boback said his company found the Secret Service’s evacuation plans for the first lady and motorcade routes. (See an interview with Tiversa about Marine One documents found on a peer-to-peer network this spring.)

In many cases, that’s because federal government employees or contractors installed peer-to-peer software on their computers without paying attention to which documents would be shared, Robert Boback, the chief executive of Tiversa, told the panel.

“Mr. Gorton, I find your testimony today stunning,” said Rep. Paul Hodes, a New Hampshire Democrat. “You promised us two years ago you were going to fix LimeWire.”

Rep. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, suggested a similar approach. He wanted to know “whether there’s some legal action that should be taken to protect intellectual property, to protect kids from pornography, to protect classified medical information, national security information.”

Replied Gorton: “LimeWire does not control the computers of people around the country.”

That led some politicians to announce that new federal laws were necessary to stop inadvertent file sharing.

“I’m planning to introduce a bill,” said Rep. Edolphus Towns, a New York Democrat who heads a House oversight committee. He said his legislation would limit the use of peer-to-peer software on all computer networks operated by the federal government or its contractors.

He added later: “It’s not unreasonable to expect that people who install file-sharing software want to share files.”

Sensitive files like Secret Service safehouse locations, military rosters, and IRS tax returns can still be found on file-sharing networks, according to a report to a U.S. House of Representatives committee on Wednesday.

Gorton also tried to make a more subtle point: the Gnutella network is an amalgamation of scores of different P2P clients, many of which may have different default settings, and LimeWire shouldn’t be held responsible for someone’s decision to share files using a program written by a different company.

Lime Group chairman Mark Gorton tried to defuse some of the criticism, saying “the current version of LimeWire does not share any documents by default,” and many security improvements were added in version 5 of the software–released in December 2008–that were absent from version 4.

In addition, the Federal Trade Commission should investigate whether P2P software developers are violating the law, and the Obama administration should “undertake a national campaign to educate consumers about the dangers of file sharing software,” Towns said. (In April, Towns’ committee informed the FTC it had reopened an investigation into inadvertent file sharing.)

Other suggestions were more extreme. Rep. Bill Foster, an Illinois Democrat who’s more technically-inclined than most politicians (he has a doctorate in physics), said “the nuclear option is to block the Gnutella protocol” on a national basis.

But, Foster acknowledged, that wasn’t likely to work. Another option, he said, would be to create a new version of the Gnutella protocol that allowed only limited clients–that curbed what folders or file types could be shared–to connect to it.

Not helping was the fact that Gorton testified at an earlier hearing in July 2007 on the same topic.

It didn’t work. “It is chilling what the public now has available to it,” Towns said. “The idea that you can look at the first lady’s information, where she’s going, how she’s getting there. Tax records, things of that nature…we need to get to the bottom of this.”

The two-and-a-half hour hearing singled out LimeWire, which is probably the highest-profile P2P client in use today. LimeWire is distributed by Manhattan-based Lime Wire LLC (which sells a more featureful version called LimeWire Pro) and it uses the BitTorrent and Gnutella networks.

(Credit: Electronic Arts)

“We’re thrilled with the global success of The Sims 3 over these last few months and are looking forward to expanding on the gameplay experience with one of the most robust expansion packs to The Sims yet,” said Scott Evans, General Manager of The Sims at EA.

Sims players will soon be able to journey to countries such as China and Egypt, search for hidden treasures, and meet fellow Sims along the way.

Electronic Arts announced Monday that it’s developing the first expansion pack for its popular Sims 3 game. The new pack, Sims 3 World Adventures, will take players on a journey to real-world locales, says EA, from ancient tombs in Egypt to romantic getaways in France. While trekking across the globe, players can take on new challenges, develop different skills, and interact with other Sims.

Since its release in early June, Sims 3 has been a hot product. The game sold 1.9 million copies in its first week alone, making it EA’s best PC game launch ever.

The Sims 3

Designed for the PC and Mac, the Sims 3 Expansion Pack will hit store shelves the week of November 16, says EA. A portable version for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch will be out early next year.

Boeing this week is touting a pair of deals focused on unmanned aerial vehicles, both of them rotorcraft.

(Credit:
Boeing)

The Marines are looking for a few good UAVs. Will Boeing's Hummingbird pass muster?

In June, Boeing established an Unmanned Airborne Systems division, in a sign of the growing importance of UAVs (or UASes, in Boeing’s parlance) to its overall business. The division also oversees the smaller, fixed-wing ScanEagle UAV, which has been deployed with the Marines in Iraq, from Boeing’s wholly owned InSitu subsidiary.

Austria's Schiebel Industries wants to land some deals for its S-100 Camcopter with buyers in the U.S.

On Monday, the aerospace behemoth said that it’s getting $500,000 from the U.S. Marines Corps that will go toward a project meant to demonstrate the cargo-hauling capabilities of Boeing’s A160T Hummingbird. The Marines are looking into the possibility of dispatching unmanned aircraft as cargo carriers in place of trucks driven by flesh-and-blood troops.

By February, Boeing will have to demonstrate that, in six hours or less per day for three consecutive days, the 35-foot-long A160T can tote a 2,500-pound payload from one simulated forward operating base to another. The turbine-powered A160T, which can fly autonomously, debuted in 2007 and can cruise at 140 knots. Besides carrying supplies, it could also be equipped with surveillance gear.

(Credit:
Schiebel Industries)

On Tuesday, Boeing announced a deal with Austria’s Schiebel Industries to help market and support Schiebel’s S-100 Camcopter, which the companies are touting as a “stabilized video system for surveillance and reconnaissance.” Schiebel is keen to find customers in the U.S. government and military sectors, and Boeing of course is a defense contractor of long standing. (Schiebel says civilian customers are also welcome.)

The S-100, which has a rotary engine and can fly autonomously, has a data link range as great as 200 kilometers. The primary payload bay can handle up to about 100 pounds, though Schiebel says the standard payload is about half that, at which weight the S-100 flies for about 6 hours. The UAV is about 10 feet long and 3.5 feet high.

In a test of its aerial prowess last summer, the A160T flew for 18.7 hours without refueling while carrying a 300-pound internal payload, and still had 90 minutes of fuel left in its tank. Boeing says that the flight, in May 2008, set a world endurance record for UAVs in its class.

“This teaming agreement (with Schiebel) allows us to offer another quality unmanned airborne platform to customers who depend on the intelligence these aircraft can provide,” Vic Sweberg, director of Boeing Unmanned Airborne Systems, said in a statement. “It will further enable our new division to deliver innovative solutions tailored to our customers’ needs and budgets.”

In addition to running on a power pack of lithium-ion batteries, the all-electric motorcycle is made of 100 percent recyclable materials. The Santa Cruz, Calif.-based motorcycle manufacturer claims all the bike’s materials are nontoxic and that even the battery pack is “landfill-approved.”

The motorcycle has a range of 50 miles per charge, and can be charged from any standard 110- or 220-volt outlet, according to Zero’s own specs.

The all-electric Zero DS motorcycle from start-up Zero Motorcycles became available in the U.S. on Thursday.

But one never knows. Zero has begun hosting a 24-hour electric motorcycle endurance race that could gain a following.

The environmentally-friendly motorcycle has a top speed of 55 mph.

(Credit:
Zero Motorcycles)

The Zero DS

While it seems like a great alternative for getting around town, I’m not convinced the next biker band will be singing about a wild “C-Free Rider.”

For $9,950, U.S. drivers can ride both on and off-road free from carbon guilt.

To ease his return to the unfamiliar tug of Earth’s gravity, Wakata made the return to Earth resting on his back in a recumbent seat on Endeavour’s lower deck. Making a somewhat surprising appearance at a post-landing news conference four hours after touchdown, he told reporters “I feel great.”

“What an amazing flight this was,” he said. “This was a truly phenomenal mission.”

Endeavour’s crew ferried Wakata’s replacement into orbit — astronaut Timothy Kopra — and carried out five spacewalks to attach a sophisticated experiment platform to the Japanese Kibo laboratory module, replacing aging solar array batteries and attaching three spare components to the station’s main truss.

(Credit:
NASA)

Kopra and his new space station crewmates — Expedition 20 commander Gennady Padalka, Michael Barratt, Roman Romanenko, European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne, and Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk — watched Endeavour’s landing via television uplinked from mission control.

Most of the debris came off after Endeavour was out of the dense lower atmosphere when the shuttle’s heat shield is most vulnerable to impact damage. But engineers want to make sure there is not a generic problem of some sort that might also affect the performance of Discovery’s tank.

Barreling down the runway at more than 200 mph, Hurley released a red-and-white braking parachute, the shuttle’s nose dropped to the runway and Polansky guided the ship to a stop on the runway centerline.

“You invited your whole crew, right?” Polansky joked.

The astronauts spent the entire day Thursday trying to repair the complex device before running into questions about how to isolate the suspect heater element. Engineers are hopeful the repairs can be completed later today.

“We got everything accomplished aboard space station that we needed to with this mission,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, chief of space operations at NASA headquarters. “The planning was outstanding, the work was excellent, the vehicle performed extremely well.

Rollout to launch pad 39A is targeted for Monday, after additional work to test the foam insulation on the central part of Discovery’s external tank. The tests were ordered in the wake of problems during Endeavour’s launch when an unusual amount of “intertank” foam peeled off during the climb to space.

“Yes,” Wakata laughed. “Can you handle raw fish?”

Returning space station flight engineer Koichi Wakata, launched to the International Space Station aboard the shuttle Discovery last March, enjoyed an extra month in space when Endeavour’s launch was delayed from June 13 to July 15 by technical problems and bad weather.

Engineers already had pull tested some 150 foam cores around the intertank of ET-132, but an additional 18 “plug-pull” tests were ordered Thursday.

“Completing the assembly of all Kibo elements (is) extremely important to our country,” said Keiji Tachikawa, director of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. “In addition, gaining valuable knowledge and experience from astronaut Wakata, the first Japanese member of a long-duration mission crew aboard the ISS, will advance our country’s future manned space activity.”

“Houston, Endeavour, wheels stopped,” he radioed in a traditional post-landing call to mission control.

“Roger wheels stopped, Endeavour. Welcome home,” astronaut Alan Poindexter replied from the Johnson Space Center. “Congratulations on a superb mission from beginning to end. Very well done.”

“Well, thanks to you and the whole team,” Polansky said. “That’s what it’s all about. And we’re happy to be home.”

The space shuttle Endeavour touches down on runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center after a 248-orbit 6.5-million-mile mission.

“What a fantastic mission!” Polansky said on the runway after a brief walk-around inspection of Endeavour. “We are thrilled to be a part of a team that is able to accomplish missions like this.

Descending through a partly cloudy sky, commander Mark Polansky pulled the shuttle’s nose up just before reaching the runway, pilot Douglas Hurley deployed the spaceplane’s landing gear and Endeavour settled to a picture-perfect landing at 10:48:08 a.m. EDT.

With Endeavour back on the ground, NASA is pressing ahead with work to ready the shuttle Discovery for launch around August 25 on a mission to deliver supplies and equipment to the space station.

Updated at 3:50 p.m. EDT: Added comments from Wakata during a post-landing news conference.

Still unresolved is what caused the foam to come off in the first place. It’s not yet clear whether a “root cause” must be in hand and understood before Discovery can be cleared for flight or whether the pull tests and data analysis alone will be enough.

What can we say but thanks to everybody at the Kennedy Space Center for working so hard on Endeavour. It’s a beautiful vehicle and we enjoyed every minute of it. Hopefully we brought it back in good shape.”

Polansky, Hurley, flight engineer Julie Payette, David Wolf, Christopher Cassidy and Thomas Marshburn doffed their pressure suits and left the shuttle and their crew transport vehicle about an hour and a half after landing, welcomed home by new NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and other senior managers.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.–The shuttle Endeavour dropped out of orbit and glided back to Florida Friday, wrapping up a 16-day space station construction mission and bringing Japan’s first long-duration astronaut back to Earth after four and a half months in weightlessness.

Along with completing the Kibo installation, the Endeavour astronauts also released a jammed payload attachment mechanism, installed television cameras on the Japanese experiment shelf, and made a wiring change to put two of the station’s stabilizing gyroscopes on separate circuits, easing concerns about a single failure that could take down both units.

Mission duration was 15 days 16 hours 44 minutes and 58 seconds for a voyage spanning 248 complete orbits and 6.5 million miles since blastoff July 15 from launch complex 39A.

“When the hatch opened, I really smelled the grass from the ground and just glad to be back home,” he said. “I’m feeling great. Still feeling a little shaky when I walk, but I’m feeling very good.”

Barratt and Thirsk continued repair work today to recover use of the station’s U.S. carbon dioxide removal assembly, or CDRA, which was knocked out of action last weekend and again Wednesday by a presumed short circuit in a heating element.

On the eve of his 46th birthday, Wakata said, “I’m just looking forward to having a lot of sushi and birthday cake. I think it’s in production somewhere, so I’m very much looking forward to that.”

Water ice cannot exist in direct sunlight on the surface of the moon.

Scientists expected the spacecraft to find signs of hydrogen–an indicator of possible water ice deposits–in permanently shadowed craters near the moon’s south pole. Ice could be expected from cometary impacts over the past few billion years.

LRO was launched by an Atlas 5 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on June 18 along with a companion spacecraft, the $79 million Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS. The two spacecraft separated shortly after launch.

“However, it can exist below the surface even if the surface is warm,” Vondrak said. “So you may have had water deposited, or some other hydrogen-bearing compound like methane or ammonia, that was deposited from a comet or some other event and then was promptly buried.

“It’s a time capsule, it’s a window into the past of the entire inner solar system, of Earth,” he said. “I see LCROSS and LRO combined as a gateway, a pathfinder to truly understanding even the origins of volatiles, of water, in the inner solar system. The moon is right there, it’s right next to us, we can go there much more easily than a lot of other places and make these studies.”

The observations confirm “there is hydrogen near the lunar south polar region,” said Project Scientist Richard Vondrak. “What it also seems to indicate is that the hydrogen is not confined to permanently shadowed craters. Some of the permanently shadowed craters do indeed contain hydrogen. Others, on the other hand, do not appear to have hydrogen. And in addition, there appear to be concentrations of hydrogen that are not confined to the permanently shadowed regions.”

“Commissioning is now complete and all of our seven instruments as well as our spacecraft (are) essentially performing flawlessly,” he said Thursday. “So we are certainly ready to proceed on into the mission.”

After two months of checkout and calibration, NASA’s $504 million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was maneuvered into a circular 31-mile-high mapping orbit Tuesday, and scientists said Thursday the spacecraft’s instruments are delivering intriguing clues about the possible presence of water ice.

Indeed, one of LRO’s instruments shows the temperature in such craters never rises above about 33 kelvin, or minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit. But in a surprise, the spacecraft is detecting signs of hydrogen both inside and outside of such craters.

LRO Project Manager Craig Tooley said the lunar orbiter is operating in near flawless fashion, with all seven of its instruments now activated and trained on the moon. The craft was maneuvered from its initially elliptical commissioning orbit into a 31-mile-high circular orbit last Tuesday with a three-minute rocket firing over the south pole.

The 4,200-pound solar-powered spacecraft also will measure the solar and cosmic radiation that future lunar explorers will face and map out the surface topology, mineralogy, and chemical composition of Earth’s nearest neighbor. One year will be spent scouting future landing sites followed by three years of purely scientific observations.

“It could be water, it could be methane, it could by hydrocarbons or organics,” said LCROSS Project Manager Dan Andrews. “And so actually from a scientific standpoint, this is incredibly important. Whatever the moon has collected over the last three-and-a-half billion years in terms of water, organics, materials from comets, asteroids, the sun, could be trapped in these pockets on the moon.

The issue is of critical importance to scientists and engineers who envision someday building permanent research stations on the moon, using solar power to break down mined water ice to provide oxygen, water, and hydrogen rocket fuel. Scientists do not yet know if water ice is, in fact, mixed in with the moon’s upper soil, only that hydrogen-bearing material of some sort seems to be present.

(Credit:
NASA)

“The moon is starting to reveal her secrets, but some of those secrets are tantalizingly complex,” said Michael Wargo, NASA’s chief lunar scientist.

“And so you could have this buried hydrogen that then would be lasting for long, long periods of time. It would be very durable there. What we don’t know is the abundance and how deep it is buried.”

LCROSS is designed to guide the Atlas 5’s spent Centaur second stage to an impact in a permanently shadowed crater near the moon’s south pole on October 9. Instruments aboard LCROSS, LRO, the Hubble Space Telescope, and at observatories on Earth will study the debris thrown up by the crash to look for evidence of ice.

Equipped with seven state-of-the-art cameras and other instruments, LRO was built to look for suitable landing sites for future manned missions while creating the most detailed lunar atlas ever assembled.

In a surprise, high-resolution data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, right, shows indications of hydrogen both inside and outside of permanently shadowed craters.