LRO-LAMP Observations of the LCROSS Impact Plume

On 9 October 2009, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) sent a kinetic impactor to strike Cabeus crater, on a mission to search for water ice and other volatiles expected to be trapped in lunar polar soils. The Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) ultraviolet spectrograph onboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) observed the plume generated by the LCROSS impact as far-ultraviolet emissions from the fluorescence of sunlight by molecular hydrogen and carbon monoxide, plus resonantly scattered sunlight from atomic mercury, with contributions from calcium and magnesium. The observed light curve is well simulated by the expansion of a vapor cloud at a temperature of similar to 1000 kelvin, containing similar to 570 kilograms (kg) of carbon monoxide, similar to 140 kg of molecular hydrogen, similar to 160 kg of calcium, similar to 120 kg of mercury, and similar to 40 kg of magnesium.