NASA has come over all violent for today’s Moon mission, where a rocket stage has smashed into the surface of our satellite, hopefully sending up a plume of scientific goodness.

“This marks the end of the LCROSS flight mission,” NASA broadcast just moments ago. A shepherding spacecraft observed the impact of a proceeding spent rocket stage and then itself smashed into the Moon.

The actual live impact was a bit of a bust, with nothing very clear on the video feed. Still, the Moon has been well and truly hit.

Previous missions have also used ‘impactors’ to kick up Moon dust and help us see what the Moon is made of (hint: not cheese), but today’s LCROSS impact has been characterized by a bombastic tone. This is not an impact, according to the media. Instead, NASA has BOMBED THE MOON.

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.”

In addition, the space agency has had to contend with conspiracy theories about today’s impact, including that it is ‘bombing the Moon’ to destroy evidence of a secret base.

A full news story on the impact will be up later today on Nature News. In the mean time I shall leave you with these words from Rush Limbaugh:

If there are smarter people than us out there — and, of course, goes without saying they would have to be — and they have brought peace throughout the universe except for earth and we’re bombing the moon, this could set up a retaliatory attack! You know, wait ’til the meteorites organize when they hear about this, folks.