At 1:30 a.m. Friday morning Hawai'i time, a NASA rocket will crash into the Cabeus crater near the south pole of the moon.

The Centaur booster rocket, traveling more than twice the speed of a bullet, will send up tons of debris. That could reveal the presence of water on Earth's nearest neighbor.

Windward's Center for Aerospace Education director Joe Ciotti is inviting space fans to the Lanihuli Observatory at Windward Community College to watch the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, make impact.

The impact will be so big that — weather permitting — viewers on Earth with a good amateur telescope should be able to view the plume of material ejected.

Four minutes after impact, the spacecraft, which has guided the rocket to the moon since its June 18 launch from Earth, will follow nearly the same path, descending down through the big plume while analyzing its debris with onboard instruments and cameras.

This analysis is looking for water (ice and vapor), hydrocarbons and other materials.

Data will be sent back to Earth before the spaceship itself crashes into the moon.

Ciotti hopes to capture the impact through the observatory's 16-inch telescope. "We'll be attaching a camera (to the telescope) for a direct feed to a large screen monitor set up for viewers in the observatory's gallery," he said.

"If weather is bad, we hope to pick up remote transmission from telescopes elsewhere; we'll also have kiosks and computer displays to explain the mission."

Ciotti said water brought by comets may exist in the craters of the chilly polar regions, which remain in total darkness.

"If there is a source of water, this is important for our exploration of the moon," Ciotti said. "It costs $100,000 to carry each gallon of water into space."

"And if there is water, that means we have oxygen, hydrogen and potential fuel for using the Moon as a launch pad for going to Mars."