LCROSS passes final test before trip to Moon

William Atkins
Friday, 27 June 2008 02:53

Science - Space

The U.S. space agency NASA announced that its Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, nicknamed LCROSS, passed a thermal vacuum test in June 2008, which now gives it the go-ahead to investigate whether the Moon has water ice in a permanently shadowed lunar crater.



The thermal vacuum test subjected the spacecraft to 13.5 days of cooling-and-heating cycles, with temperatures ranging from -40 degrees Fahrenheit (-40 degrees Celsius) to 230 degrees Fahrenheit (110 degrees Celsius).

The LCROSS mission is being managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center, at Moffitt Field, California.

The 4,400-pound (2,000-kilogram) LCROSS is expected to be launched no earlier than November 24, 2008, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

It will be launched as a “secondary payload,” onboard an Atlas V 401 rocket. The primary payload is the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).

Once in orbit, a Centaur upper stage rocket will execute a burn so that LCROSS/LRO is sent to the Moon in order to enter an elongated Earth orbit. Both spacecraft are expected to reach the Moon in early 2009.

As the LRO/LCROSS payloads approach the Moon, the LRO spacecraft will separate from Centaur. Later, the Centaur will separate from LCROSS so that the spent upper stage is positioned to crash into the Moon.

The 4,400-pound (1,980-kilogram) Centaur will be used as a lunar “impactor"--crashing into a permanently shadowed cratered region of the Moon’s south pole.

The LCROSS will then be positioned so that it will fly through the debris plume created by the collision of Centaur with the Moon. It will take images with visible-, near-infrared-, and mid-infrared-wavelength cameras.

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