At roughly 12:30AM ET early on Friday morning, a soda machine-sized NASA spacecraft slammed into the dark side of the moon at 3,600 miles per hour. The impact was entirely planned by NASA engineers in order to conclude the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) program, which launched late last year. After studying the composition of the lunar atmosphere for months, the spacecraft didn't have the fuel to continue flight and engineers decided it was best to place it down on the dark side of the moon, out of sight and far from previous historic landing sites.
During six months of research, the spacecraft discovered trace amounts of water in the atmosphere, but it wasn't able to accomplish its primary goal. NASA hoped to...
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