In a brute-force search for ice on the moon, an empty 5,000-pound rocket stage traveling twice as fast as a rifle bullet crashed into a permanently shadowed crater near the moon's south pole Friday, presumably blasting out tons of debris for examination by an instrumented probe that carried out its own kamikaze plunge four minutes later. While the initial impact at 4:31 a.m. PDT did not prove especially dramatic--it was not even visible in real-time video from the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS)--scientists said a camera sensitive to temperature variations clearly recorded the flash of the Centaur rocket's catastrophic crash.

More important, spectroscopic data indicated the presence of material of some sort above or near the impact point in a murky crater known as Cabeus, and instruments aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter observed the Centaur crater and confirmed a plume of debris. But it was not immediately clear how extensive the plume was or how much material was blasted out.