An artist's impression of the LCROSS spacecraft and its booster rocket about to hit the Moon, which will happen in October.
Lunar "bomb" on course for crash
27 Jun 2009
NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, successfully completed its most significant early mission milestone this week with a lunar swing-by and calibration of its science instruments. The satellite will search for water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the moon's south pole.
With the assist of the moon's gravity, LCROSS and its attached Centaur booster rocket successfully entered into a large, looping orbit around Earth on Tuesday. The manoeuvre puts the spacecraft and its spent Centaur booster on course for a pair of impacts near the moon's south pole in October.
During its swing by the moon, the spacecraft's instruments were turned on and calibrated by scanning three sites on the lunar surface, selected because they offer a variety of terrain types, compositions and illumination conditions. The spacecraft also scanned the lunar horizon to confirm its instruments are aligned in preparation for observing the Centaur's debris plume.
LCROSS and its attached Centaur upper stage rocket are now in a long, looping polar orbit around Earth and the Moon. Each orbit will be roughly perpendicular to the Moon's orbit around Earth and take about 37 days to complete. Before impact, the spacecraft and Centaur will make approximately three orbits.
LCROSS and the Centaur separately will collide with the Moon on October 9, creating a pair of debris plumes that will be analysed for the presence of water ice or water vapour, hydrocarbons and hydrated materials.
The spacecraft and Centaur are targeted to impact the Moon's south pole near the Cabeus region. The exact target crater will be identified 30 days before impact, after considering information collected by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and observatories on Earth.
Nine hours before impact, about 85,000 kilometres above the surface, LCROSS and the Centaur will separate. LCROSS will spin 180 degrees to turn its science payload toward the Moon and fire thrusters to create distance from the Centaur. The spacecraft will observe the flash from the Centaur's impact and fly through the debris plume. Data will be collected and streamed to Earth for analysis. Four minutes later, LCROSS also will impact, creating a second debris plume that will be studied using Earth-based telescopes.
More information: LCROSS mission
Adapted from information issued by NASA.
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