Atlas 5 rocket launches NASA moon mission

An Atlas 5 rocket thundered to life and streaked into space Thursday, hurling two NASA spacecraft toward the moon for a $583 million mission to scout out landing sites for future manned missions and to search for evidence of hidden ice near its frigid poles.

One spacecraft will map the cratered surface from a perilously low 31-mile-high orbit while the other will blast out 350 tons of pulverized rock and soil for chemical analysis, digging a shallow 66-foot-wide crater in a kamikaze crash visible from Earth.

"First, we want to identify safe landing sites," said 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."

Delayed 20 minutes by nearby thunderstorms, the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket's RD-180 first stage engine ignited at 5:32 p.m., slowly pushing the towering rocket away from launch complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

An Atlas 5 rocket takes off on a NASA mission to scout out lunar landing sites and to search for hidden ice near the moon's poles.

(Credit: United Launch Alliance)

Spectacular rocket cam views showed the Atlas 5's fiery exhaust plume against the cloud-draped limb of planet Earth and the deep black of space. Another camera showed the nose cone fairing falling away, exposing the satellite payload to view.

Two firings by the Atlas 5's hydrogen-fueled Centaur second stage successfully boosted the dual-spacecraft payload onto a four-day trajectory to the moon.

The $504 million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, equipped with seven state-of-the-art cameras and other instruments, will look for suitable landing sites for future manned missions while creating the most detailed lunar atlas ever assembled.

The 4,200-pound solar-powered spacecraft also will measure the solar and cosmic radiation that future lunar explorers will face and map out the surface topology, mineralogy and chemical composition of Earth's nearest neighbor. One year will be spent scouting future landing sites followed by three years of purely scientific observations.

While its cameras will not be able to detect the footprints of the 12 Apollo astronauts who once walked on the moon, they will be able to see the landing stages, rovers and other equipment that were left behind.

LRO's companion, the $79 million Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or Lcross, faces a much shorter lifetime. With LRO on its own, Lcross will maneuver the spent Atlas 5's Centaur second stage into a looping four-month orbit back around the Earth.

If all goes well, Lcross will aim itself and the Centaur back at the moon, targeting a permanently shadowed crater near the south pole for a dramatic crash landing October 9. With LRO looking on from lunar orbit, the 5,000-pound Centaur will hit the dark surface at some 5,600 mph, blasting out a 66-foot-wide crater some 13 feet deep.

The debris excavated by the impact will be blown high above the lunar surface, some of it above the crater's rim and into sunlight for the first time in 2 billion years or more.

Lcross, following close behind the Centaur on a virtually identical course, will fly through the debris cloud, spending four precious minutes studying the composition of the material and looking for signs of water ice with a suite of nine instruments.

Then it, too, will crash to the moon less than 2 miles away after dutifully transmitting its data back to Earth. The Hubble Space Telescope will monitor the impact, as will amateur and professional astronomers in the Western hemisphere, looking for the flash that will signal the Centaur's demise.

The LRO/Lcross mission is NASA's first trip to the moon since the more modest Lunar Prospector was launched in 1998. The new missions are part of NASA's post-Columbia program to send astronauts back to the moon to establish a permanent Antarctica-style research station starting around 2020.

The Bush administration approved the new plan and President Obama endorsed the resumption of moon flights during his campaign.

But earlier this year, the White House Office of Management and Budget cut $3.1 billion from NASA's projected budgets through 2013--money needed to begin development of a heavy-life moon rocket--and the president ordered an independent re-assessment of NASA's long-range goals.

The review panel held its first public hearing Wednesday and its final report is expected by the end of the summer.

Regardless of the ultimate fate of NASA's manned moon program, the two spacecraft launched Thursday promise to greatly advance understanding of the moon's history and evolution, along with making the first serious attempt to identify favorable landing sites for future long-duration visits.

A 'rocket cam' view of the Atlas 5's first stage exhaust plume during the climb to space.

(Credit: NASA TV)

Separating from the Lcross/Centaur shortly after launch, LRO will fly to the moon on its own. After a long rocket firing Tuesday morning to brake into an elliptical orbit, engineers will spend up to two months checking out and calibrating the spacecraft's instruments and maneuvering it into a circular 31-mile-high orbit.

For comparison, the orbits used by Apollo command modules were about 70 miles high.

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

"An inevitable question I get is 'why do we need LRO? Haven't we done this?' 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."

Scientists and engineers thinking about future outposts on the moon are focused on the polar regions, where areas in permanent sunlight offer unlimited solar power. Conversely, permanently shadowed craters nearby offer the prospect of ice deposits and along with them, a source of water, oxygen and hydrogen rocket fuel.

"We actually have much better maps of Mars than we have of our own moon's polar regions," Tooley said. "So the job of filling out that information set, making that atlas complete for planning safe and fruitful return to the moon, that job fell to LRO."

The Lcross mission is much more tightly focused.

Earlier lunar probes detected indirect evidence of water ice in dark polar regions. Scientists believe ice could indeed be trapped in polar craters that never see sunlight, brought in by comet impacts over the billions of years since the moon's formation.

The Centaur impact is designed to blast out material in the top few feet of a shadowed crater's floor where ice deposits are suspected.

"There's data out there which could show it's potentially ice rinks," said Lcross project manager Dan Andrews. "There's data out there that shows it's blocky. There's data out there that could support the fact that there might not be water ice there," said Dan Andrews, the Lcross project manager. "So that illustrates the importance of this mission. Let's go see what it is.

"The benefit of having water ice there is self-evident. The availability of water right there on the moon, availability of producing oxygen, oxidizer for rocket fuel for other missions, it's very, very interesting if water ice is indeed there."

[wildhorsesfilm]

Hey, did my computer just belch and send me back in time half a century? Haven't we already done this?

Perhaps we should called it NASA... National Aeronautic (and) Space Again

[bbfreak]

Not quiet, our knowledge of the moon is limited. Especially of the poles, which LRO and LCROSS are focused on. Why are they focused on the pole? Well if your going to send astronauts to the moon for long duration trips, it'd be helpful if you could find some water ice and map better potential landing sites.

Of course that may not explain why we're going back to the moon, some would say we should head straight to Mars. Problem is, a manned trip to Mars would be over two years of isolation and it would probably be best to practice techniques on the moon instead of sending green astronauts directly to Mars. You know, so they don't end up dead or go space crazy.

The moon is close enough that we would be foolish not to use it as a training ground of sorts.

[go_india]

"One spacecraft will map the cratered surface from a perilously low 31-mile-high orbit".
Been there. Done that. Project Chandrayan. Check Wikipedia.
- Your's truly. India

[joenaut]

That would be a 100 mile orbit and now it is in a 200 mile orbit. Nasa will get more specific data and actual physical data from this mission. Chandrayaan-1 is a good inexpensive mission...just different...

[bbfreak]

Nope, Chandrayan-1 hasn't done that. LRO's orbit will be much lower then any other unmanned spacecraft sent to the moon. Chandrayan-1 orbit last I heard was 124.274238 miles or 200 km.

[mymanjones]

Russia, China and others just finished a meeting to denounce the US as the main super power. This is a result of the poor light the US has been in recently. Little nations are building rockets that they are so proud of having that would not make a dot on the accomplished rockets of the US, and what better way to announce that than with this moonshot.

Being a Ronald Regan and proud of our great nation just got better.

Don Jones

[jbriz12]

@go_india

even more impressive is that Chandrayaan-1 cost India ~80 million USD. Quite a bargain next to 504 million for this latest mission.

[bbfreak]

Well, there are key differences between the two spacecraft. Chandrayaan-1 for example is 523 kg (1,153 lb), while LRO is 1,846 kg (4,069 lb). Also, Chandrayaan-1 was a joint mission with NASA the ESA and Bulgarian Academy of Sciences payloads aboard. It isn't a competition though, LRO and Chandrayaan are both out for the same thing and as with all science you don't just pack up your bags after the first results. No, you take more data from different sources to confirm the findings.

[BCCM]

I like the way Indians brag about,"been there done that'. These Indian academics never thanked me for incessantly downloading my data to use on your own lunar research. Wanna thank me now? (The Chinese Government used my data and information from our website as well; to confirm the geo-chemical composition of the Lunar Highlands. ) Eugene Shoemaker said as far back as 1972 upon examining the Apollo samples, "the moon is even drier than we thought", and our lab analysis of BCC9601 a lunar highlands sample confirms that. Although as if by magic, NASA flew countless miles to Mars, sat down an instrument, began digging and PRESTO, ice beneath the martian soil. What are the odds of this happening on the first try.............................zero? NASA has allot of housecleaning to do in the area of scientific misconduct and state sponsored fraud and censorship, before they can bring me on board to back their quackery.

http://www.bccmeteorites.com/misconduct-planetary.html

[kcurt]

I can tell you where they will say is the best place. Where ever they left the car on the moon.

[Globalforme]

NASA launches 2 ships for the moon as Obama looks into cost of space exploration and asks the question: Will the US ever walk on the moon again? What do you people think?

Would you like a journalist to investigate that story and produce a report FOR YOU?

Leave your comments and give your ideas on the story page http://www.globalfm.com/id;1/action;showpage/page_type;detail/page_id;176/
...and if enough people interested, the report will be made!
(We just need to gather your interest on the website, thank you)

[Global for me ? 'Journalism FOR YOU' ? wants to empower its users to instigate professional journalistic coverage of stories, issues and current affairs that are not already available through conventional news sources or which, in your view, require more detailed attention]

Just visit our story page and share your views... This could interest you!

[DrTuri]

Are They Insane? Imagine what we could do with 600 millions to improve the economy?

Dr. Turi

[joenaut]

Appearantly nothing, because BO already put trillions into it and it is getting worse! Let things fail so we can suceed! Failure is the key to success!!! Think about it, it is so true!!!

[DrTuri]

And you wonder why the US economy is messed up? These NASA privileged selected special interest scientist groups have been feeding like bats on the taxpayers for years. These *mental snobs have manipulated the system to avoid working like we all do, instead they spend their time building little but outrageous expansive robots that end up blowing up soon after launch costing us *the working ants, billions of dollars. What are they doing? Why the hell would anyone remotely be interested in the moon? It?s a dead place playing a very important part on the spiritual conception and emotions of humankind only. Her job as a dead physical satellite was set by God himself in a way that no scientists can ever understand because of lack of Cosmic consciousness and inability to enter the archetypal realm of consciousness. The *mental snobs' mental world is rigid, logical, mathematical and physical with a serious lack of both objectivity and intuitive perception. Simply realize that a fish is designed by God to live in his watery world and we human are designed to live on hearth. Imagine that, is that difficult to understand? Don?t you think the billions of dollars wasted in stupid experiments to investigate the Lunar caps should be instead used to take care of Mother Earth's waters instead? Or better don't you think the trillions of dollars wasted fruitlessly with NASA or with the building of religious and sports buildings should be instead invested in real education? Indeed understanding and using God's cosmic order is vital for the survival of our specie but abusive political and religious groups are more interested in themselves than *WE The People.

Over the years I wrote intensively about NASA and if you really want to know the truth about NASA, go to ///////

NASA Costly Ignorance Part 3 May 14th 2009 2:15pm
NASA Costly Ignorance Part 2 May 13th 2009 3:22pm
NASA Costly Ignorance May 11th 2009 9:57pm
NASA Criminals Feb 24th 2009 12:04pm
NASA Mars Madness #2 Jun 4th 2008 2:02pm
NASA Mars Madness Jun 2nd 2008 6:10pm
NASA DECEPTION Aug 4th 2007 4:13pm
NASA Curse Jun 9th 2007 4:01pm

Blessings to all

Dr. Turi

[joenaut]

Dr Turi,

Nice try! The reality is we have to tryto do our best as a species of GOD. I do not think all of NASA has ill feelings toward mankind and wants to "waste" as a priority. Chill oet dude!

[bsample]

These "*mental snobs" as you call them are also the one's who built that computer you're typing on. All of the modern conveniences YOU enjoy are thanks to those of us who earn a living by discovering things which better our lives. It is not a superior or inferior form of work, it is simply different. I'm not religious, but are you implying that the human species should live as we did before science? Before technology? As your god created us? Or did he build us with the mental potential of scientific curiosity for a reason? I personally believe the latter if we are only referring to the very small section of beliefs devoted to religion.

The true problems in our economy can be traced back to corporate CEO's with multimillion dollar bonuses in companies which are simultaneously filing for bankruptcy. THESE are the "snobs" who make millions by sitting around. These are the financial brats who demand the American tax payers sacrifice so their champagne and caviar stay chilled.

NASA should not be at the forefront of our financial queue, this I agree with. We should get our economy back in order before funding any further large projects for the purpose of data collection alone. But our planet has a limited number of resources, and the universe has a plethora of opportunities waiting to be discovered. NASA is not a costly ignorance, its the only sound, long-term investment left. Overpopulation, water shortages, fuel shortages, all have answers in the stars and we have evidence to prove it. We just need the means to reach far enough to make them a thing of the past. Yes, we know very little about our oceans as well, and there is still much to be discovered at home, but eventually the last species will be identified, the last sediment will be sampled, and the last drop of gas will be used. Our universe is nearly (or quite possibly) infinite. That is where we will go.

[rahsut123]

lol @ Dr. Turi's stupidity

[sodbusternorm]

So, why the debate? It sounds like the mission is underway regaurdless of funding. Therefore I would be more concerned for the cloud of heavy debris and rock, almost weightless, all 350 tons hurling outwards toward the monitoring craft in the lower orbit formentioned. Forces to create such a crator should have little effect on a mass as large as our moon. Or will it? The moon has no protective, atmospheric envelope as the earth that retains gravitational fields noted in our Van Allen Belts. Is it possible to tweek the invisible Axis the moon needs affecting our ocean tides that are so important to
shipping, growth cycles of our plants,etc? E=MC/2 isn't the problem. F=MA, Mass x Acelleration=Force.A force on or at the very center of a magnetic pole of this magnitude on the delicate magnetic flux on slow turning object such as our moon sounds a little risky don't you think? Norman L Willey, Yale Ia.

[sodbusternorm]

Your article mentioned October 9th 2009 the craft with the explosives is targeting oneof the poles of the Moon, Right?

[SoMdnewby]

Its been rumored that this blast into the moon has a nuclear warhead. I thought years ago there was an international treaty not to proliferate nuclear weapons into space. Can someone please provide a definitive answer.