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Jarrah: In September 2003, the European Space Agency, ESA, launched their unmanned lunar
probe, the SMART-1.
Three years later, it ended its mission by performing a controlled impact on the near side of the
moon, and in doing so, the probe performed a soil analysis.
It did what?
Jarrah: The probe performed a soil analysis.
The PROBE performed a soil analysis?
During a CONTROLLED impact?
Jarrah: ESA launched their SMART-1 probe to crash into the near side of the moon and analyze the soil.
Right.
First, SMART-1 had no instruments on board to perform a chemical soil analysis.
The only equipment that bird carried with her was for:
Lunar exosphere studies,
High Frequency Radio Transmission studies,
Spacecraft and planetary environment studies,
Lunar Remote Sensing,
The micro-Imager Experiment,
Space laser communications studies,
And Autonomous navigation studies.
Nowhere in this list do you see anything like “soil sample analysis.”
It’s not in there.
Second, even if SMART-1 carried instruments to do soil sample analysis, it wouldn’t
have had time to do it during the “controlled” impact.
SMART-1 crashed into the moon at 2km per second.
That’s about 4500 mph.
Weighing just under 350 kg (770 lbs) at the time of impact, it collided with enough force
to dig a 3 to10-meter WIDE, 1-meter DEEP hole in the moon’s surface.
That was the extent of the control.
Now, in the half a millisecond it took for SMART-1 to go from being a viable satellite,
above ground, to being an unrecognizable array of metallic fragments, spewing out of the
hole it dug, it ceased to be a usable satellite.
None of the instruments could continue to operate after impact.
There wasn’t even time for an airbag to deploy.
The satellite broke up into thousands upon thousands of itsy bitsy little tiny pieces
that were, in a matter of seconds, scattered over several square miles of lunar surface.
SMART-1’s own mother wouldn’t be able to identify him after that crash.
I don’t understand how Jarrah could construe that SMART-1 could have done ANYTHING while
it was getting ripped apart like that.
To do a chemical soil analysis, SMART-1 would have to make a soft landing, collect samples,
and do a mineralogical chemical analysis that would take literally hours.
But again, there were no instruments on board to do that.
I don’t know where the lad comes up with this stuff.
Jarrah’s claim is simply a bare assertion fallacy.
Now, later Jarrah offers an Australian Broadcasting Corporation newscast on the SMART-1 impact
that makes a little more sense.
Ockerby: By punching a 10-meter hole in the moon’s surface, the probe has uncovered
minerals different to the rocks gathered on the surface during moon walks.
The key is the chemical signatures in the dust and debris thrown up by the collision.
Here it sounds like the announcer is saying that new minerals (plural) were identified
in the dust throw up by the collision by earth based observers.
OK.
What new minerals were those?
They never tell us.
Throughout the entire newscast, the teaser is the only portion of the newscast where
they mention anything about new minerals being found.
The chief “mineral” that scientists were hoping to find, of course, was ice, under
the lunar surface.
Why?
Because future, long duration, manned missions to the moon will require that astronauts live
off the land and that will require that oxygen and water, hopefully found abundantly in ice
crystals just under the lunar surface, be present wherever they land.
Ockerby: The probe has uncovered minerals different to the rocks gathered on the surface
during moon walks.
Jarrah: Knowing that the Apollo rocks are different to those analyzed by SMART-1, what
proof do we have that man actually went there?
How would the discovery of new minerals on the moon invalidate the samples that we already have?
When William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, did that invalidate the rest of the
planets that we already knew existed?
No.
Now, SMART-1 crashed on Sunday, September 3, 2006.
I’m assuming the newscast that Jarrah shares with us occurred either that evening or the
day after.
Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been news.
What I find interesting is that later in the exact same newscast, the announcer says that
the analysis of the dust thrown up by SMART-1’s crash may not be available for a year.
Stevens: So, each theory of the moon’s formation has a prediction for what the moon should
be made out of, and by looking at what the moon’s actually made out of, we can eliminate
some theories and reinforce others.
Ockerby: It’s hoped results will be available within a year.
Michael Ockerby, ABC News, Hobart.
This second statement conflicts with the teaser and seems to be more consistent with reality,
since ESA didn’t release anything about the crash and the independent observations
of the scattered dust, before September 7, 2006
And since then, the only thing that ESA has published that mentions any minerals found
on the moon, are a few articles about the ill-fated Chandrayaan-1.
So why did the ABC announcer say that new minerals (plural) had already been identified
in the dust and debris thrown up by SMART-1?
And, why didn’t he name the minerals?
This teaser appears to be bits and pieces of information taken from different sources
available to ABC at the time.
An article published by ABC Online, just hours before the crash, talks about plans to analyze
the “chemical signatures” found in the flash of light from the impact.
The day after the crash, ABC published an article saying they still HOPED that the dust
kicked up by the impact would tell them more about the moon.
Why would they say that if the results were already in?
Incidentally, this article also mentions the 3 to 10-meter WIDE, 1-meter DEEP hole that
SMART-1 would carve out in the lunar surface.
The article also has a link to an April 27, 2004 article about a “new lunar mineral,”
dubbed hapkeite, found in a lunar meteorite that fell to earth in Oman.
This is the article that Jarrah should have used if he wanted to build a case for new
minerals of lunar origin being discovered that were not already found in the Apollo
moon rocks.
Of course, how would the scientists know they were looking at a lunar meteorite if they
didn’t have the Apollo samples to compare to?
Hmm?
But there’s also a third ABC Online article, a transcript from The World Today, which aired
September 4, 2006, the day after the crash, which not only says that the cloud of dust
is an ongoing investigation, but includes a statement by Phil Edwards, Officer in Charge
at Narrabri, which puts everything in perspective.
He equates trying to fully understand lunar geology based on the limited samples brought
back by the Apollo astronauts to trying to fully understand the earth’s geology based
on a couple of handfuls of sand from the Sahara Desert.
Finding NEW minerals on the moon - minerals DIFFERENT than those found in the Apollo moon
rocks - is something that the scientific community expects to happen.
So, finding new minerals on the moon does not, in any way, prove or even suggest that
the Apollo moon rocks are fake.
Jarrah has much more to say about SMART-1, and so do I, but it won’t all fit into one video.
We will continue our analysis of Jarrah’s SMART-1 claims later.
Ciao moon hoax conspirators, wherever you are.