NASA's Quest To Find Lunar Water Moves Closer to Launch | Aero-News Network
Aero-News Network
RSS icon RSS feed
podcast icon MP3 podcast
Subscribe Aero-News e-mail Newsletter Subscribe

Airborne Unlimited -- Most Recent Daily Episodes

Episode Date

Airborne-Monday

Airborne-Tuesday

Airborne-Wednesday Airborne-Thursday

Airborne-Friday

Airborne On YouTube

Airborne-Unlimited-05.12.25

Airborne-NextGen-05.13.25

AirborneUnlimited-05.14.25

Airborne-FlightTraining-05.15.25

AirborneUnlimited-05.16.25

Wed, Jan 16, 2008

NASA's Quest To Find Lunar Water Moves Closer to Launch

LCROSS Sensors Will Fly On Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

Cameras and sensors that will look for the presence of water on the moon have completed validation tests and been shipped to the manufacturer of NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.

The science instruments for the satellite, which is known as LCROSS, departed NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA for the Northrop Grumman Corporation's facility in Redondo Beach, CA to be integrated with the spacecraft. LCROSS is scheduled to launch with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, FL by the end of 2008.

"The goal of the mission is to confirm the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the moon's south pole," said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS principal investigator at Ames. "The identification of water is very important to the future of human activities on the moon."

In 2009, LCROSS will separate into two parts and create a pair of impacts on the permanently dark floor of one of the moon's polar craters. The spent Centaur upper stage of the Atlas V rocket will hit the moon, causing an explosion of material from the crater's surface. The instruments aboard the satellite will analyze the plume for the presence of water ice or water vapor, hydrocarbons and hydrated materials. The satellite then will fly through the plume on a collision course with the lunar surface. Both impacts will be visible to Earth and lunar-orbiting instruments.

Northrop Grumman is designing and building the spacecraft. After installing the instruments on the satellite, Northrop Grumman will test the entire spacecraft system to ensure it is flight worthy.

During development of the LCROSS payload, Ames engineers and scientists built new spaceflight hardware and used new testing procedures to take advantage of lower cost, commercially available instruments. The team subjected the commercial instruments and NASA-developed components to conditions simulating the harsh environment of spaceflight. Working closely with the commercial instrument manufacturers, all safety and operational concerns were addressed quickly and efficiently.

"This payload delivery represents a new way of doing business for the center and the agency in general," said Daniel Andrews, LCROSS project manager at Ames. "LCROSS primarily is using commercial-off-the-shelf instruments on this mission to meet the mission's accelerated development schedule and cost restraints."

"This arrangement has proven to work very well," Andrews added. "The vendors work with their products and develop a spaceflight knowledge base, and the LCROSS project gets very mature products for deployment on this mission."

FMI: www.nasa.gov, www.northropgrumman.com

Advertisement

More News

ANN's Daily Aero-Term (05.19.25): Fuel Remaining

Fuel Remaining A phrase used by either pilots or controllers when relating to the fuel remaining on board until actual fuel exhaustion. When transmitting such information in respon>[...]

ANN's Daily Aero-Linx (05.19.25)

Aero Linx: Piper Aviation Museum Preserving the history and legacy of the Piper Aircraft Corporation and its founding family. In the past three years, the Piper Aviation Museum has>[...]

Klyde Morris (05.16.25)

Klyde Has No Patience... FMI: www.klydemorris.com>[...]

Airborne 05.19.25: Kolb v Tornados, Philippine Mars, Blackhawk Antler Theft

Also: Tentative AirVenture Airshow Lineup, Supersonic Flight Regs, Private Pilot Oral Exam Guide, Boeing Deal The sport aircraft business can be a tough one... especially when Moth>[...]

Airborne-Flight Training 05.15.25: Ray Scholarship, Alto NG, Fighter Training

Also: FedEx Pilots, Army Restructuring, Alaska ANG, Incentive for ATC Hiring EAA Chapter 534 in Leesburg, Florida announced that the 2025 Ray Aviation Scholarship winner is Abdiel >[...]

blog comments powered by Disqus



Advertisement

Advertisement

Podcasts

Advertisement

© 2007 - 2025 Web Development & Design by Pauli Systems, LC