On Friday, 2 US spacecraft are set to be launched and crash on the moon.

At 7:31 a.m. ET, NASA‘s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite is scheduled to drop its Centaur upper-stage rocket on the lunar surface. The objective of this launch is to help the LCROSS probe find the presence of water in the moon’s soil.

The LCROSS will follow through the debris plume after four minutes to collect and relay data back to Earth and then it will crash into the Cabeus crater near the moon’s south pole.

The LCROSS carries spectrometers, near-infrared cameras, a visible camera and a visible radiometer–instruments that will aid NASA to analyze the plume of more than 250 metric tons’ of dust for water vapor.

The orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will watch and photograph the collisions. NASA is also encouraging amateur astronomers to watch.

(via CNN)