Space: Lunar probes, Hubble troubles, old moon photos

The next day after the STS-127 shuttle mission was postponed, NASA moved its focus to a different launch pad, hardly missing a beat.  In a wonderfully choreographed negotiation between the two different projects, within hours two unmanned lunar probes were launched, riding on a single rocket.  The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is now in orbit around the moon, mapping the way for a subsequent and long-awaited manned mission to the moon.  The media coverage follows:

“Closing in on the Moon,” is from Space.com (6/23/09).  To quote:

Four-and-a-half days after launch, NASA’s $504 million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter fired its main thrusters for 40 minutes early Tuesday, successfully braking into an initial elliptical orbit around the Moon.

“NASA returning to the moon with first lunar launch in a decade,“  is from NASA Breaking News (6/18/09).  To quote:

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launched at 5:32 p.m. EDT Thursday aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The satellite will relay more information about the lunar environment than any other previous mission to the moon.

“NASA successfully launches lunar impactor,” is from NASA Breaking News (6/18/09).  To quote:

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, Fla., at 5:32 p.m. 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, Calif., performed system checks that confirmed the spacecraft is fully functional.

“Rocket launches new U.S. Moon probes,” is by Tarik Malik from Space.com (6/18/09). To quote:

NASA launched its first lunar mission in more than a decade on Thursday, sending two unmanned probes to explore the moon, hunting for water ice and mapping the lunar surface.

The two new probes – a powerful lunar orbiter and a smaller craft destined to crash into the moon’s south pole – atop an Atlas 5 rocket that lifted off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Their launch comes nearly 40 years after the Apollo astronauts first set foot on the moon in July 1969.

. . . LRO is expected to spend a year building complete maps of the moon and take a close look at 50 potential landing sites for future manned missions. The spacecraft also carries sophisticated gear to measure the radiation hazards future astronauts might face and seek out pockets of hydrogen-rich areas, which may contain frozen water at the bottom of permanently shadowed craters around the moon’s south pole.

. . . Unlike LRO, it will take NASA’s second lunar probe about four months to reach the moon. LCROSS actually consists of two part – a small shepherding spacecraft and a massive, 41-foot (12-meter) tall Centaur rocket stage that it will slam into the moon in early October.

The mission is simple: crash two probes into a permanently shadowed crater at the moon’s south pole at about 5,580 mph (8,980 kph), and sift the resulting ejecta for signs of water.

. . . NASA plans to use LRO, the Hubble Space Telescope and other satellites, as well as a network of ground-based professional and amateur astronomers to watch as LCROSS guides the Centaur in to its crash, and then follows with its own impact four minutes later.

“Return to the moon,” is from EurekAlert! (6/17/09).  To quote:

The Interdisciplinary A building on the Arizona State University Tempe campus. . . For nearly two years, professor Mark Robinson and his team have called this building home, developing it into a state-of-the-art Science Operations Center (referred to as the SOC) to work in conjunction with their contribution to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The instrument payload of LRO consists of seven scientific instruments from institutions around the nation and globe that will return lunar imagery, topography, temperatures, and more. Robinson is Principal Investigator of one of the instruments on board, the imaging system known as LROC (short for Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera).

. . . “We’re collecting the data that will be used to determine where the first lunar outposts, and eventually settlements, will be located,” says LROC scientist Samuel Lawrence, a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Earth and Space Exploration in ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

“Lunar Exploration Missions Roll to Pad for Thursday Launch,” is from NASA Breaking News (6/17/09).

Introduction — Space.com’s Charles Choi wrote an earlier (6/16/09) Space.com story introduced the concept to readers with the headline, “Crash & Splash: NASA Probes to Dash Toward Moon.“  Summary: “After more than a decade, NASA is once more ready to launch two probes to the moon, one of which will smack into the lunar surface.”

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Not long after being repaired, refurbished and returned to orbit, the Hubble Space Telescope engineers had a scare.  One of the critical computers crashed.  But, just like the rest of us, operators were able to reboot it and get it running again.  Whew!

“Hubble Telescope bounces back from computer glitch,” is by Tariq Malik at Space.com (6/18/09).  To quote:

The Hubble Space Telescope is bouncing back from a potentially alarming computer glitch just weeks after its last overhaul by astronauts.  Hubble program manager Preston Burch told SPACE.com that a computer in the iconic observatory’s new data handling unit seized up inexplicably early Monday, forcing engineers on Earth to reboot the space telescope remotely.

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In a wonderful connection to the space program’s distant past, original close-up moon photos from decades ago will help the current reconnaissance mission.  This is a great and heart-warming story:

“Old photos focus on the moon’s south pole,” is from MSNBC.com (6/17/09).  Nearly 1800 photos were digitally restored using the old tape players that had been stored in a NASA staffer’s barn.  They are published at  Moonviews.com.  To quote:

Restored photos of the moon’s south pole, taken by lunar orbiters in 1967, were released this week in anticipation of NASA’s launch of two new probes that will look for signs of underground ice in the region.

“Moon’s South Pole gets Close-up in restored photos,” is by Robert Goodier from Space.com (6/17/09).  Summary: “NASA restored its 1967 photographs of the moon’s dark south pole before launching two probes to search for underground ice.”

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The moon mapping mission with high resolution photos will be sending lots of information back to scientists and planners for a year.  And in a lettle less that 4 months, the L-Cross will slam into the moon, sending up a plume of material that lots of people are hoping shows that there is H2O on the moon.

The whole thing is still “golly-gee-whiz” to this old Space Junkie who started watching and vicariously travelling back when the U.S. first started space exploration.

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