Yesterday the Japanese lunar satellite SELENE or Kaguya came to the end of its twenty one-month flight and was steered to crash-land on the moon. It had been used to study the origin and geological history of the moon, as well as various features of its surface. The crash itself should give us some useful information about crater formation too - it’s not that often we get to perform a direct experiment firing tonnes of mass into an astronomical body! You can see a picture of it here: look at the bright dot which appears and then fades.
The craft is also responsible for this gorgeous video of an ‘Earthrise‘ from the moon, and spectacular pictures and video of the Earth eclipsing the Sun. (Interestingly, the camera that took these was not on the craft because it was the best instrument for scientific use but because it was the best for producing striking images. I think that’s a great idea: understanding the world is beautiful but so is just looking at it, and taking the opportunity to do both only adds to them. It’s also an acknowledgment that science belongs to the public as well.)
But one person at least is less than happy with its achievements. Satya Harvey writes as though this is a tragedy - because we may have hurt the moon.
In many traditions, including astrology, the moon represents the feminine… Purposefully crashing something into the moon just to watch what happens is akin to a schoolboy cutting up a live frog to see what makes it jump. It is an example of the domination of the left-brained rational scientific approach over the intuitive… Did these scientists talk to the moon? Tell her what they were doing? Ask her permission? Show her respect?
