Lunar research opportunity

As many of you are aware, the ESA's SMART-1 lunar probe is scheduled to spiral down over the next three weeks, culminating in its impacting the Lunar surface on 3 September 2006.

During its descent through the Moon's tenuous atmosphere, our colleague Claudio Maccone has proposed that as many of us as possible monitor its S-band and X-band beacons, to analyze the nature of the Lunar atmosphere through sounding measurements.

He has secured time on the 32 metre VLBI antenna in Medicina to support these measurements. I know several of you have been doing Deep Space Network monitoring - now is your chance to make a significant amateur contribution to science.

Claudio's research proposal to the Istituto di Radioastronomia appears (in English) at:

http://www.setileague.org/articles/maccone.pdf

Please take a look, and contact Claudio at the email address (clmaccon@libero.it) with
cc to me, if you are able to participate in this important experiment. Thanks.

If any of you are in touch with other amateur groups (SARA, ERAC, AMSAT, etc.) that may be interested in monitoring SMART-1, please feel free to cross-post this email to their various Lists.

--
H. Paul Shuch, Ph.D.
Executive Director Emeritus, The SETI League, Inc.

http://www.setileague.org

n6tx@setileague.org