The scientific objectives of Project A119 would have been the detonating of a "smallish" nuclear device (over 1.7 kilotons of TNT) on the Moon in order to "facilitate research into its geologic make-up". This, in principle, can be attempted by non-nuclear means, for example, using the much lower impact energy released by the water prospecting Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission, which was launched in 2009 and released the "Centaur" kinetic energy impactor, with a mass of and an impact velocity of about .