The ESA probe SMART-1 crashed into the moon yesterday. It made a crater about ten meters wide and one meter deep into the "Lake of Excellence" on the Moon. A French-Canadian telescope in Hawaii recorded the crash and the cloud of dust.
Smart-1 had the same techonolgy as the Deep Space 1 probe here:
"SMART-1 is the vanguard" of future space missions, said the craft's operations manager, Octavio Camino-Ramos. "Almost everything on board was innovative. It was a mission to test technology, the science was an extra plus."
A revolutionary ion thruster engine has propelled the cube, which measured just one metre across and weighed in at a paltry 350 kilos (770 pounds), since it was launched in September 2003.
The engine type has only been used once before -- with the US craft Deep Space 1, launched in 1998 to rendezvous with an asteroid and then a comet.
Ion engines are fuelled by xenon gas. The gas atoms are charged by electric guns powered by solar panels and are then expelled from the rear of the spacecraft, delivering a tiny thrust, visible as a ghostly blue glow.
Compared with the blast, roar and smoke of chemical rockets, ion engines seem almost laughably puny.
But chemical engines burn out after a couple of minutes, whereas an ion engine can push on gently for months or even years, for so long as the Sun shines and the small supply of propellant lasts.
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