LCROSS Hits Its Mark!



Onlookers participate in LCROSS pre-impact activities at NASA’s Ames
Research Center. Credit: NASA

The crowd at NASA Ames was poised and ready for impact as the LCROSS camera started sending back stunning images of the moon’s south pole. At impact, a flash or large plume wasn’t visible with the LCROSS camera, but even though we didn’t see it doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.


The LCROSS mission operations team initiated power-up of the LCROSS science
payload and captured this image of the moon. Credit: NASA

Mission scientists confirmed the LCROSS spacecraft monitored whatever the Centaur rocket lifted from the crater floor. At this time, it isn’t yet clear how much dust was raised but LCROSS Principal Investigator Tony Colaprete did confirm that the instruments onboard the sheparding spacecraft captured the Centaur impact crater.

Now mission scientists need more time to study the data. In the next few weeks, scientists will pore over the information to determine if water ice does exist in the Cabeus crater.

To stay up to date, be sure to follow the LCROSS website, the LCROSS twitter feed, and its Facebook page.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/main/index.html

Impact from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's Line of Sight


Scientist and engineers are adjusting LRO’s orbit to have it fly its closest approach to the Cabeus target site just 90 seconds after the Centaur impacts the lunar surface. 


Artist Concept of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter with Apollo mission
imagery in the background. Credit: NASA

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, better known as LRO, was a sister payload to LCROSS during launch and now the orbiter will pass over the moon at just the right time to capture the Centaur impact to collect key data about the physics of the impact and how volatile materials may have been mobilized.


This image shows the moon’s south pole, as seen by the 1994 Clementine
mission. The possibility of frozen water is one of many reasons NASA is
interested in thisspot as a potential future landing site. However, many of the
craters in this area where frozen water sources are most likely to be found are
in constant shadow, which inhibited Clementine’s ability to see into these craters.
These shadows are the very dark areas at the pole’s center. The upcoming
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission will study this area and search for
evidence of frozen water sources. Credit: NASA

During and after impact LRO’s LAMP far UV spectrometer will search for evidence of significant water ice or water signatures and how they evolve in the moon’s atmosphere.  LRO’s Diviner radiometer will peer into the impact site to measure the heating effects caused by impact and how the temperature changes over time. LRO will continue to study the impact site using its suite of instruments long after the dust settles.

A Personal Perspective
David A. Paige, principal investigator Diviner
Diviner is one of the seven instruments aboard LRO

We on the LRO Diviner team are looking forward to the LCROSS impact with great anticipation. It’s not every day that we will have an opportunity to excavate a significant volume of material from one of the moon’s permanently shadowed polar cold traps.  We expect that a new lunar impact crater will form, and that dust, rock, and possibly cold-trapped volatile materials such as water ice will be thrown into space.

Everything we learn about the LCROSS impact will come from Earth observations and from observations from nearby spacecraft. Diviner will get excellent views of the impact site as LRO flies by. We intend to make maps of the radiometric temperature of the impact site before and after the impact, as well as observations of the dust plume that will be lofted during the impact event. Diviner’s observations may help confirm the location of the LCROSS impact, and its effects on the impact on the surrounding terrain. Diviner has already mapped the impact site on previous orbits and so any changes that are detected will be of great interest. We have no idea what LCROSS will uncover, but we’re anxious to know the results.


Diviner has acquired the first global daytime and nighttime thermal
maps of the moon. These maps were assembled using Diviner data obtained during
August and the first half of September, 2009. Credit: NASA/GSFC/UCLA

Hopefully, everything will go well for LCROSS and LRO on Friday morning and we’ll learn something new and exciting about the moon!

It's Almost Time!


It’s almost time!

It’s been over three months since the Atlas V soared from Cape Canaveral, Fla. into space carrying the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (“LCROSS” for short). Now it’s finally time for LCROSS to do its things and get up close and personal with the moon.


 An artist’s interpretation of NASA’s LCROSS spacecraft observing the first
impact of its rocket booster’s Centaur upper stage before heading in for its
own crash into the moon’s south pole. Credit: NASA

On Oct. 9 beginning at 6:30 a.m. CDT, the LCROSS spacecraft and heavier Centaur upper stage rocket will execute a series of procedures to separately hurl themselves toward the lunar surface to create a pair of debris plumes that will be analyzed for the presence of water ice. The Centaur is aiming for the Cabeus crater near the moon’s south pole and scientist expect it to kick up approximately ten kilometers (6.2 miles) of lunar dirt from the crater’s floor. 


Image of NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility. Credit: NASA

The sun never rises above certain crater rims at the lunar pole and some crater floors may not have seen sunlight for billions of years. With temperature estimated to be near minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit, these craters can ‘cold trap’ or capture most volatiles or water ice.


Earth-based radar image of the North Pole of the Moon, showing the position of the crater
Erlanger (arrow). Photo: Arecibo Observatory and NASA

On the day of impact, LCROSS at approximately 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) above the lunar surface will spin 180 degrees to turn its science payload toward the moon and fire thrusters to slow down. The spacecraft will observe the flash from the Centaur’s impact and fly through the debris plume. Data will be collected and streamed to LCROSS mission operations for analysis. Four minutes later, LCROSS also will impact, creating a second debris plume.

The LCROSS science team will lead a coordinated observation campaign that includes LRO, the Hubble Space Telescope, observatories on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea and amateur astronomers around the world.

It’s an exciting time for the most prominent object in our night sky with water being found on the surface last week by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper — one of eleven scientific devices carried by the Chandrayaan-One spacecraft of the Indian Space Research Organization.


These images show a very young lunar crater on the side of the moon that faces away
from Earth, as viewed by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Indian Space
Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. Image credit: NASA

However, the Moon Mineralogy Mapper can only observe lunar soil to a depth of a few millimeters and the amount of water present in that layer is very small. It’s been said the driest deserts on Earth have more water than the surface of the moon near its poles. LCROSS could prove that water does exist deeper beneath the moon’s surface and present a valuable resource in the human quest to explore the solar system.


Astronaut James Irwin, lunar module pilot, gives a military salute while standing
beside the deployed U.S. flag during the Apollo 15 lunar surface extravehicular
activity (EVA) at the Hadley-Apennine landing site. Credit: NASA

Two ways to watch the impact:

Tune into NASA TV. The Agency will broadcast impact live from the moon, with coverage beginning Friday morning at 5:15 a.m. CDT. The first hour, pre-impact, will offer expert commentary, spacecraft status reports, and a computer-generated preview of the impacts.

Or you can watch in your backyard using your telescope. Viewing opportunities are best for the Pacific Ocean and western parts of North America due to absence of light and a good view of the Moon at the time of impact. Hawaii is the best place to be, with Pacific coast states of the USA a close second. Any place west of the Mississippi River, however, is a potential observing site.


W.M. Keck Observatory and the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility with Haleakala on
Maui in the distance as seen at sunset from Mauna Kea. Credit: John Fischer

 

On Course for the Moon!


The wait is over! Under cloudy skies LRO and LCROSS thundered into the atmosphere enroute to the moon. Watch the launch (MP4, 143 MB) 


NASA’s LRO and LCROSS spacecraft on top of the Atlas V rocket launch from
Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Image: NASA


An United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket blasts off with NASA’s LRO/LRCOSS
mission from Space Launch Complex-41, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.,
at 5:32 p.m. EDT today. Image Credit: Pat Corkery, United Launch Alliance

Everyone was nervous with all the weather constraints and afraid a nearby thunderstorm would scrub the launch and force it to go on Friday. But the weather was with us and we heard those magic words that we were “good to go.”


Countdown clock, post-launch, L+28

The next mission milestones will be separation of the spacecraft from each other. Then later tonight we’ll wait for the upper stage Centaur to turn over operations to the LCROSS spacecraft.

NASA's New Moon Missions Seek Answers about Lunar Environment


NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, began their journey to the moon rolled out to launch complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Center at about 1:30 a.m. EDT on May 28.

The missions are scheduled to launch together aboard an Atlas V rocket on June 17. The satellites will help to set the stage for future lunar exploration and scientific research.

Since the moon is only four days away, we want to use Earth’s closest neighbor to explore before we take bigger steps into the solar system for longer-term exploration.

Just as a scout finds the safest ways for expedition on Earth, NASA will send a robotic scout, LRO, to gather crucial data on the moon’s topography, composition and environment. LRO follows in the footsteps of Ranger, Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor. These predecessors to the Apollo missions searched for the best possible landing sites.

LRO and its seven instruments are designed to find possible landing sites, locate potential resources, characterize the lunar radiation environment, and test new technology. It will create a comprehensive atlas of the moon’s features. After launch, LRO’s journey to the moon will take approximately four days. After about sixty days, LRO will enter its operational circular polar orbit, about 31 miles above the moon’s surface. The data sets gathered by LRO will enable a safe and productive human return to the moon.

LCROSS is a spectacular mission will attempt to determine if water ice occurs in areas of permanent shadow near the lunar poles. LCROSS uses the spent second stage of the Atlas rocket, the Centaur, as an SUV-sized kinetic impactor that will excavate a small crater on the floor of a permanently shadowed lunar crater. The Centaur has never been used in this way before. The LCROSS spacecraft will fly through the Centaur impact plume to search for signs of water ice before impacting the lunar surface and creating a second debris plume. Both plumes and their resulting craters will be observed closely by LCROSS mission scientists and astronomers around the world.

LCROSS represents a new generation of fast development, cost-capped missions that use off-the-shelf hardware and flight-proven software to achieve focused mission goals. Whatever the mission discovers about the presence of water will increase our knowledge of the mineral makeup of the most remote areas of the moon, the deep polar craters where sunshine never reaches.

More pictures: http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/search.cfm?cat=201
More about LRO: https://www.nasa.gov/lro
More about LCROSS: https://www.nasa.gov/lcross