Wide-eyed non-blinking
Samurai swimming moonbeams
So long little fish

Today humanity lost one of its best servants among those splendid electromechanical emissaries sent to explore our nearest neighbor. After an enormously successful two year mission the lunar probe Kaguya arrived as expected in a controlled impact on the Moon's surface. Launched and operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), credit goes to them in the final days for making precise calculations available about the projected time and location of the impact.

They might have been an orbit or two off, depending on any lunar mountains that might rise high enough to steal a few final hours of life from Kaguya. I haven't seen any reports yet, the event might be visible as a bright flash or plume. It's on the bottom side - rather, the other side - of the earth right now so I can't look up and see what I couldn't look up and see anyway. Those fortunate enough to live in eastern Asia and Australia had the opportunity to observe the impact event, thankfully the world is full of telescopes and those who enjoy using them, and the internet is full of astronomy fanatics who disseminate neat-o pictures in a related wavefront traveling into the virtual ether at impact speeds.

Frankly I'm surprised if the Japanese didn't come up with some clever way to view the event, it's not like them to miss a stroke. Oh well, managing the spin of the earth for the impact is not so bad a trick of timing! One can't really take a bad picture of the moon, and from the early stills to their stunning motion pictures, every image that Kaguya took is breathtaking. Exceptional. Pick any superlative you please, not since Apollo has anything brought the moon so close to our senses. And in some ways it beckons from up ahead, calling us to shake off our post-climactic torpor and return in peace for all mankind once more.

I'm sad now that there won't be any similar treasures from space for awhile, at least until the lunar reconnaissance orbiter leaps to the task in a few weeks. These last two years have passed so quickly! But its impact will leave a crater and debris ripe for study, tickling yet another secret from the coy moon. Long before exhausting its utility or our favor it went on to perform one last service for its creators back home, one bright flash of energy briefly disturbing the stillness of millennia. Domo arigato Kaguya.


Back to Dr.TOS
Back to top