NASA TV
NASA TV stream of the final minutes before impact with the moon.

Updated 10.09 8.02 a.m.

This image of crater Cabeus was taken from the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite shortly after the Centaur rocket impacted the moon. "Hard to tell what we saw there... We're confident the instruments performed as expected," said science director Michael Bicay of NASA's Ames Research Center, on NASA TV..

Bad Astronomy blog: Ground-based reports are that no plume has been detected...

Science Now: "Nothing seen in telescopes RT @Space_Pete: The comm rm at Mauna Kea says "No impact flash, no ejecta curtain observed"! #LCROSS"

NYT:
At 4:31 a.m. Pacific time (7:31 a.m. Eastern time), one piece of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite -- LCROSS, for short -- slammed into the bottom of a crater at 5,600 miles per hour, excavating about 350 metric tons of the moon and leaving behind a hole about 65 feet wide, 13 feet deep.

Nature.com blog The Great Beyond (NASA punches Moon in the FACE): "This tone hasn't been helped by incidents such as the software lead for LCROSS tweeting, "Red Leader, this is Gold Leader. We're starting our attack run now."

10.07 5.49 a.m.

Detail of a NASA poster depicting an artist's view of Friday's kamikaze rocket to the moon's surface.

There's a blog called Do Not Bomb the Moon by Lara Gardner, a Portland writer (Why I'm Here). It's not fact-filled, it's just an expression of concern. In a vague and visceral way this seems wrong to me too, perhaps messing with forces we don't understand.

Bombing the moon recalls Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which begins with astronauts on the moon touching a mysterious monolith which then sends a signal out into space, presumably back to those who placed it there: Humans have made it to here.

Except this message will be far more violent.

Nevertheless, NASA plans to do it at 7:31:30 a.m. EDT Friday morning. The cost: $75 million. The objective, to detect water on the moon. A Centaur rocket will hurl at 5,592 mph into an impact site near the moon's south pole called Cabeus, kicking up a plume up to six miles high. A "shepherding spacecraft" will fly through the plume, gathering data -- and maybe getting wet.

NASA: "A live NASA TV Broadcast is planned for the LCROSS impacts starting at 6:15 a.m. EDT/3:15 a.m. PDT, Oct. 9, on NASA TV and at www.nasa.gov/ntv. " The bandwidth is seldom enough for these events, so if you're gung ho about this, the closest public broadcast listed so far at NASA is a special event at the Boston Museum of Science, Target: Moon!, beginning at 9 a.m.

On the East Coast, the sun will be rising during impact, and it will be really hard to see. Nevertheless, there's plenty of info for those who try at the NASA observation page, which tries "to provide the casual backyard observer useful information for observing the LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite) impact event without having to go to too many other sites."

Bad Astronomy blog at Discover Magazine is a site you might want to check into for impact lite, if astronomy isn't a hobby of yours. (Background: LCROSS impact site picked | Change of address for LCROSS.)

Of course, you and I and Lara Gardner have no choice about this. Neither does the man in the moon.

The Spoof, a satire site, turns the tables with fake news (Moon To Bomb Earth On Friday) that begins,

Washington DC-- The Moon will bomb the Earth on Friday. Targets include the Atlantic Ocean, California, and Illinois. The moon creatures are doing this purely for scientific research. They want to see if their (sic) is any moon dust on the Earth, among other things. Only one-quarter of the planet will be affected...

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

-- Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, scene 5.