Joint Payload With Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
NASA successfully
launched the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or
LCROSS, Thursday on a mission to search for water ice in a
permanently shadowed crater at the moon's south pole. The satellite
lifted off on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station, FL, at 0532 EDT, with a companion mission, the Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO.
LRO safely separated from LCROSS 45 minutes later. LCROSS then
was powered-up, and the mission operations team at NASA's Ames
Research Center at Moffett Field, CA, performed system checks that
confirmed the spacecraft is fully functional.
LCROSS and its attached Centaur upper stage rocket separately
will collide with the moon at approximately 0730 on Oct. 9, 2009,
creating a pair of debris plumes that will be analyzed for the
presence of water ice or water vapor, hydrocarbons and hydrated
materials. The spacecraft and Centaur are tentatively targeted to
impact the moon's south pole near the Cabeus region. The exact
target crater will be identified 30 days before impact, after
considering information collected by LRO, other spacecraft orbiting
the moon, and observatories on Earth.
"LCROSS has been the little mission that could," said Doug
Cooke, associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems
Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We stand
poised for an amazing mission and possible answers to some very
intriguing questions about the moon."
The LCROSS will perform a swing-by maneuver of the moon around 6
a.m. on June 23 to calibrate the satellite's science instruments
and enter a long, looping polar orbit around Earth and the moon.
Each orbit will be roughly perpendicular to the moon's orbit around
Earth and take about 37 days to complete. Before impact, the
spacecraft and Centaur will make approximately three orbits.
On the final approach, about 54,000 miles above the surface,
LCROSS and the Centaur will separate. LCROSS 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.
"This mission is the culmination of a dedicated team that had a
great idea," said Daniel Andrews, LCROSS project manager at Ames.
"And now we'll engage people around the world in looking at the
moon and thinking about our next steps there."
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.