Europe's first spacecraft to the moon ended its three-year mission today by crashing into the lunar surface in a volcanic plane called the Lake of Excellence.
The impact of the SMART-1 spacecraft was expected to leave a three metre-by-10 metre crater and send dust miles above the surface.
The moon pictured minutes after SMART-1 landed
Observatories watched the event from Earth and scientists hoped the cloud of dust and debris would provide clues to the geologic composition of the site.
"That's it — we are in the Lake of Excellence," said spacecraft operations chief Octavio Camino as applause broke out in mission control in Darmstadt, Germany. "We have landed."
Minutes later, officials showed off a picture captured by an observatory in Hawaii displaying a bright flash from the impact.
"It was a great mission and a great success and now it's over," said mission manager Gerhard Schwehm.
The spacecraft ended a three-year mission that scanned the lunar surface from orbit and tested a new, efficient, ion-propulsion system that officials hope to use on future interplanetary missions.
Launched into Earth's orbit by an Ariane-5 booster rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, in September 2003, SMART-1 used its ion engine to slowly raise its orbit over 14 months until the moon's gravity grabbed it.
The engine, which uses electricity from the craft's solar panels to produce a stream of charged particles called ions, generates only small amounts of thrust but only needed 176lbs of xenon fuel.
The craft's X-ray and infrared spectrometers have gathered information about the moon's geology that scientists hope will advance their knowledge about how the moon's surface evolved and test theories about how the moon came into being.
Yesterday, mission controllers had to raise the craft's orbit by 2,000ft to avoid hitting a crater rim on final approach. Had the orbit not been raised the craft would have crashed one orbit too soon, making the impact difficult or impossible to observe.
SMART-1, a cube measuring roughly a metre on each side, took the long way to the moon — more than 62 million miles instead of the direct route of 217,000 to 250,000 miles.
The spacecraft also been taking high-resolution pictures of the surface with a miniaturised camera, taking its last images just minutes before the impact.
AP