Europe's first lunar mission hits moon

DARMSTADT, Germany -- Europe's first spacecraft to the moon ended its three-year mission Sunday with a planned crash that scientists hoped would provide clues to the geological composition of a volcanic plain called the Lake of Excellence.\nThe SMART-1 spacecraft slammed into the volcanic plain at 1 1/4 miles per second, to a round of applause in the mission control room in Germany.\nThe crash was expected to leave a 3-yard-by-10-yard crater and send dust miles above the surface. Observatories watched the event from Earth, and scientists hoped the cloud of dust and debris would help them learn about the geologic composition of the site.\n"That's it -- we are in the Lake of Excellence," said spacecraft operations chief Octavio Camino as applause broke out in mission control in Darmstadt, Germany. "We have landed."\nMinutes later, officials showed off a picture captured by an observatory in Hawaii displaying a bright flash from the impact.\n"It was a great mission and a great success, and now it's over," said mission manager Gerhard Schwehm.\nOn Saturday, mission controllers had to raise the craft's orbit by 2,000 feet to avoid hitting a crater rim on final approach. Had the orbit not been raised the craft would have crashed one orbit too soon, making the impact difficult or impossible to observe.\nThe spacecraft's instruments have gathered information that could increase scientists' understanding of how the moon's surface evolved and help test a theory that the moon originated when another astronomical body slammed into the Earth.\nThe spacecraft ended a three-year mission that scanned the lunar surface from orbit and tested a new, efficient, ion-propulsion system that officials hope to use on future interplanetary missions, such as the BepiColombo joint mission to Mercury with Japan's space agency slated for launch in 2013.\nSMART-1 was launched into Earth orbit using an Ariane-5 rocket from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guinea, on Sept. 27, 2003. It then used the ion engine to slowly raise its orbit over 14 months until it was seized by the moon's gravity and swung into orbit around it. By contrast, the first manned U.S. moon mission, Apollo 11, took 76 hours to reach lunar orbit in 1969, hurled by a giant Saturn-V rocket.\nSMART-1, a cube measuring roughly a yard on each side, took the long way -- more than 62 million miles instead of the direct route of 217,000 to 250,000 miles.\nBut ESA did it for a relatively cheap $140 million and on only 176 pounds of xenon fuel. NASA's Deep Space 1, launched in 1998, also used an ion engine.\nThe SMART-1 spacecraft had also been taking high-resolution pictures of the surface with a miniaturized camera, sending back its last close-up images just minutes before crashing.