Set to launch in 2008 with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). It’s a bare-bones suicide probe that will witness its rocket booster’s upper stage slam into hydrogen-rich Shackleton Crater before plowing into the lunar terrain itself.

But the European Space Agency’s SMART-1 lunar probe, already in Moon orbit, will beat LCROSS to the punch, so to speak. SMART-1 is being readied for a controlled crash into the Moon this September.

Indeed the SMART-1 team is congratulating the LCROSS team.

SMART-1’s grazing impact opportunity can help define and refine possible telescopic diagnostics from Earth, and rehearse a worldwide observations campaign. SMART-1’s crash can also study the signature of mineral ejecta as a blank control experiment before searching for water ice tossed up by LCROSS.

Lastly, impact modelers for ESA’s SMART-1 can help refine prediction tools for LCROSS.