On Friday, June 5, Todd May, NASA Manager for
the Lunar Precursor Robotic Program, gave a presentation to the Alabama Coalition
for Space Exploration. The Coalition represents Huntsville
In Todd’s presentation, he covered motivations and approaches for lunar exploration that will be undertaken in the coming years. However, the focus was upon the LRO/LCROSS missions, and Todd gave an excellent overview of the programs, their purposes, and expected results. The LRO and LCROSS spacecraft will be launched together on an Atlas V, model 401 (4 meter payload fairing, 0 boosters, 1 engine on centaur upper stage). The centaur upper stage will propel the two spacecraft to the moon, and during the lunar transit flight, the LRO will separate from the LCROSS and centaur. The LRO will go into orbit around the moon, whereas the LCROSS will flyby the moon, then transition to a Lunar Gravity Assist/Lunar Return Orbit (LGALRO), giving the centaur upper stage time to vent off all propellants. LCROSS will then separate from the centaur upper stage, and then follow the stage in to an impact on the moon’s surface. The upper stage will impact about four minutes prior to LCROSS. During this time prior to its own demise, LCROSS will be making measurements of the impact plume and ejecta cloud from the centaur stage. The centaur upper stage will impact at about 2.5 km/sec, creating an ejecta could that could rise as high as 10 km above the lunar surface. Ground-based assets will also be observing the impact events.
Both the LCROSS and LRO spacecraft have an impressive array of scientific instrumentation, included the capability to make spectroscopic, radar, laser range-finding, neutron-flux, and temperature measurements, and others. Of particular interest to the overall LRO/LCROSS mission will be detection of evidence for water on the moon, since this knowledge would have a significant impact on future manned lunar missions, and the resources required. If significant amounts of water are discovered on the moon, then these resources could be used by future manned missions. In my opinion, confirmed knowledge of lunar water could be an important catalyst that motivates private and commercial interests to go to the moon.
Significantly, the launch of the LRO/LCROSS mission is currently scheduled for June 17 (6 days from today) within a 20 minute launch window, and is expected to impact the moon on October 8th of this year. Whether LCROSS impacts near the southern or northern lunar pole depends on what launch window is achieved.
One of the very cool aspects of this mission, is that the impact event, much like the Deep Impact program (which Todd also managed), is expected to generate enough light to be visible from ground-based telescopes of ten to twelve inches in diameter or larger. It should be quite a display.
Todd was kind enough to provide an entire copy of his presentation. This pdf file can be downloaded at the bottom of this post.
These types of missions represent one of the things NASA does really well, and that is robotic planetary exploration. Furthermore, I believe that it was mentioned that this program was completed for about 80 million dollars. Considering other missions that cost more and yielded less, LRO/LCROSS sounds like a good investment for my tax dollars
There should be a great deal of interest in the success, and subsequent results of this mission. Given the importance of the data collected, hitting a harsh mistress may well be justified.
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