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 didnt 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. NASA hoped to explain reports from Apollo astronauts of an aurora borealis-like glow on the horizon just before sunrise.
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