NASA's Moon mission on its way

by Rich Bowden - Jun 19 2009, 03:21

In what has been described as the next step to mankind's return to the Moon, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) successfully launched from Cape Canaveral at 14:32 PST on Thursday.

The $500 million USD orbiting craft will spend the next year navigating the Moon from a surface height of just 31 miles (approx. 50 kilometres), documenting the landscape and looking for suitable landing spots for the next manned mission.

"First, we want to identify safe landing sites," explained project scientist Rich Vondrak. "Then, we want to search for resources on the moon. And finally, we want to get better insight into the space radiation environment and how it may be harmful to humans."

The LRO is fitted with state-of-the-art camera and sensing equipment to map the landscape and help detect harmful radiation.

Describing the challenges facing the LRO, mission project manager Craig Tooley said the mission was centred on gathering as much information as possible ahead of another manned launch toward Earth's only satellite.

"As its name says, LRO is all about doing reconnaissance at the moon," said Tooley. "Reconnaissance, specifically, to bring us back the data and the information we need to plan and execute the human return to the moon."

Tooley also described the need for the mapping mission as necessary preparation for a longer manned stay on the Moon.

"An inevitable question I get is 'why do we need LRO? Haven't we done this?'" he outlined. "And, indeed, of course, we've been to the moon. But when we went to the moon for Apollo, we went to the equatorial regions and we intentionally planned to not stay for very long."

"And even at the onset of our renewed commitment to send human beings to the moon back in 2004, we knew then if we were going to go to the moon with the more ambitious goals we have now of staying longer and perhaps establishing outposts, we were going to go to a different place," said Tooley.

The accompanying Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will remain attached to the Centaur rocket for the next four months before separating and landing on the Moon in October.

According to NASA, the LCROSS mission is to "...confirm the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater near a lunar polar region."

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