NASA's two new lunar probes -- Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), lifted off Thursday on a landmark mission to scout water sources and landing sites in anticipation of leading astronauts back to the moon in 2020.
LRO is a robotic mission aimed at creating a comprehensive atlas of the moon's features, finding possible landing sites, identifying available resources, characterizing the radiation environment and testing new technology.
After launch, LRO's journey to the moon will take approximately four days. LRO will then enter an elliptical or "commissioning" orbit. During this period, the LRO spacecraft will be checked out and the scientific instrumentation suite will be activated and tested. After about sixty days, LRO will enter its operational circular polar orbit, 50 km above the moon's surface.
The LRO payload, comprised of seven instruments, will provide vital data to enable a human return to the moon. LRO will spend at least one year in low polar orbit around the moon, collecting detailed information about the lunar surface and environment.
After a year, having collected the data for human mission planning, the spacecraft will be transferred to the Science Mission Directorate and will be used for an extended period of time to address high priority scientific questions identified by the National Academy of Sciences.
Although LRO will remotely sense evidence of resources such as water ice in cold regions of the moon, the LRO launch will also carry another spacecraft, LCROSS, which will directly determine if water ice occurs in an area of permanent shadow near the lunar poles.
LCROSS will search for water ice on the moon by sending the spent upper-stage Centaur rocket to impact part of a polar crater in permanent shadows. It will fly into the plume of dust left by the impact and measure the properties before also colliding with the lunar surface.
Whatever LCROSS discovers about the presence of water, it will increase human knowledge of the mineralogical makeup of some of the most remote areas of the moon -- deep polar craters where sunshine never reaches.
Source:Xinhua
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