NASA probes give moon a double smack

WASHINGTON — Take that, moon!

NASA smacked two spacecraft into the lunar south pole Friday morning in a search for hidden ice. Instruments confirm that a large empty rocket hull barreled into the moon at 7:31 a.m., followed four minutes later by a probe with cameras taking pictures of the first crash.

But the big live public splash people anticipated didn't quite happen. Screens got fuzz and no immediate pictures of the crash or the six-mile plume of lunar dust that the mission was all about. The public, which followed the crashes on the Internet and at observatories, seemed puzzled.

NASA officials touted loads of data from the probe and telescopes around the world and in orbit. But most of the photos they showed during a Friday morning press conference were from before the crash. The crash photos and videos were few and showed little more than a fuzzy white flash.

Still, NASA scientists were happy.

"This is so cool," said Jennifer Heldmann, coordinator for NASA's observation campaign. "We're thrilled."

"This is going to change the way we look at the moon," NASA chief lunar scientist Michael Wargo said at the news conference.

Expectations by the public for live plume video were probably too high and based on pre-crash animations, some of which were not by NASA, project manager Dan Andrews told The Associated Press Friday morning 80 minutes after impact.

Another issue, one NASA thought was a good possibility going into Friday, was that the lighting was bad and work needs to be done on images to make them easier to see, Andrews said. Experts said the images could be essentially "gray against black," he said.

"What matters for us is: What is the nature of the stuff that was kicked up going in?" Andrews said. "All nine instruments were working fine and we received good data."

Andrews said the science team is pouring through the information — including what are supposed to be good images from ground-based telescopes on Earth — to answer the big question: Is there some form of water under the moon's surface that was dislodged? It will probably be two weeks before scientists will be certain about the answer, he said.

Before the crash, mission scientists said there was a chance that if it was really moist under the crater, they'd know about water within an hour. That's not the case now, Andrews said.