KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL - NASA's pathfinding mission back to the Moon blasted off today from Kennedy Space Center with the successful launch of the Lunar Reonnaissance Orbiter and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Spacecraft (LRO/LCROSS) aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. LRO will map the entire surface of the Moon in never-before seen detail while LCROSS seeks to answer one of lunar science's greatest questions: is there water in permanently shadowed craters at the Moon's poles.
VIDEO: ATLAS LIFTS OFF WITH LRO/LCROSS VIDEO: LONGER CLIP OF THE ATLAS LAUNCH VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAYS - PART 1 VIDEO: LAUNCH REPLAYS - PART 2 VIDEO: OUR VIEW OF THE LAUNCH FROM KSC PRESS SITE VIDEO: LRO/LCROSS OVERVIEW VIDEO: MISSION OVERVIEW VIDEO: NASA LAUNCH DIRECTOR CHUCK DOVALE POSTLAUNCH COMMENTS VIDEO: LAUNCH HIGHLIGHTS VIDEO (CREDIT: ULA) VIDEO: ATLAS VEHICLE PROCESSING FOR LAUNCH VIDEO: ATLAS WITH LRO/LCROSS MOVES TO THE LAUNCH PAD VIDEO: LRO BEHIND THE SCENES (CREDIT: NASA) VIDEO: ANIMATION OF THE ATLAS LAUNCH PROFILE VIDEO: LRO SPACECRAFT PROCESSING VIDEO: LRO INTRO VIDEO (CREDIT: NASA) VIDEO: PRELAUNCH MISSION SCIENCE BRIEFING VIDEO: NASA LRO WEBCAST VIDEO: ATLAS ROLLOUT - AE CAMERA #2 - FOCUSED ON THE TOP OF THE ROCKET VIDEO: ATLAS ROLLOUT - AE CAMERA #3 - LOOKING BACK AT VIF FROM PAD ACCESS ROAD VIDEO: ATLAS ROLLOUT - AE CAMERA #4 - VIF ROOF CAMERA LOOKING TOWARD THE LAUNCH PAD VIDEO: LCRO/LCROSS B-ROLL VIDEO VIDEO: LRO - NASAS MISSION TO THE MOON VIDEO: PRELAUNCH NEWS CONFERENCE VIDEO: LRO/LCROSS SPACECRAFT IS TRANSPORTED TO THE LAUNCH PAD ALL-ACCESS SUBSCRIBERS: ATLAS LAUNCH - AE CAMERA #2 - MULIPLE VIEWS ALL-ACCESS SUBSCRIBERS: ATLAS LAUNCH - AE CAMERA #3 - VIF ROOF ALL-ACCESS SUBSCRIBERS: ATLAS LAUNCH - AE CAMERA #4 - PAD PERIMETER ALL-ACCESS SUBSCRIBERS: PRELAUNCH MISSION SCIENCE BRIEFING - 1.2 MBPS ALL-ACCESS SUBSCRIBERS: LRO WEBCAST - 1.2 MBPS LISTEN: LRO/LCROSS LAUNCH COMMENTARY - L-4 MIN THROUGH SPACECRAFT SEPARATION ALL-ACCESS SUBSCRIBERS: DOWNLOAD ENTIRE NASA TV LAUNCH COVERAGE - 1.2 MBPS - 2 GIG DOWNLOAD HI-DEF VIDEO: LRO/LCROSS HI-DEF LAUNCH REPLAYS The $511 million pair of spacecraft lead the way in NASA's ambitious goal of returning humans to the surface of the Moon by 2020. The imagery provided by LRO will enable mission planners to scout for the most appropriate landing sites for short-duration sortie missions as well as the long-duration lunar outposts planned in the Vision for Space Exploration. LRO carries a combination of narrow-angle cameras with 1-meter resolution and a wide-angle camera that will image the entire surface of the Moon at 100-meter resolution. LRO also carries at hydrogen detector provided by Russia. "That instrument (narrow-angle camera) is going to be taking thousands of images of the surface," he said, adding that diverse locales will be targeted for detailed imaging. "Those locations represent a range of topographies and slopes and lighting conditions that will allow our mission planners to be able to design our landers and design our approaches for landing so that we can be both safe and effective," said Mike Wargo, Exploration program's chief lunar scientist. "Over the course of a month, we'll see all parts of the Moon and over the course of an entire year, we'll comprehensively map with high-resolution the lunar surface," according to Rich Vondrak, LRO project scientist. LCROSS, meanwhile, will send the Atlas rocket's Centaur upper stage crashing into a permanently shadowed crater at the Moon's South Pole and fly through the debris kicked up in an attempt to determine if frozen water exists in the craters. The presence of water at the Moon's poles would be a boon for future exploration, providing water and fuel for in situ for manned outposts and reducing the amount of supplies that would need to be delivered (expensively) from Earth. The launch of LRO/LCROSS was delayed briefly when strong thunderstorms developed to the north and west of the launch complex and moved through the area. Atlas had three one-second launch windows today, at 5:12 p.m. EDT, 5:22 and 5:32. The launch team watched the storms, which had been expected to dissipate as evening approached, continue to build throughout the afternoon. The inclement weather forced the team to forego the first two launch opportunities while waiting for skies to clear enough for launch. Finally, the rocket lifted off at 5:32, trailing a 300-foot orange and blue translucent flame from its Russian-designed liquid oxygen and kerosene powered RD-180 main engine. Atlas flew in its 401 variant consisting of the 106.5 foot long core first stage and no strapon solid rocket boosters. Less than a minute after liftoff, as the rocket rose slowly at first, then accelerating faster on its way to space, the vehicle disappeared behind clouds covering the Kennedy Space Center area. A camera mounted on the outside of the rocket provided stunning views as Atlas pierced through the clouds and soared through the upper atmosphere. Having completed its job, the first stage burned out and separated several minutes after launch, followed by ignition of the Centaur second stage with 22,300 pounds of thrust under the power of its single liquid hydrogen and oxygen fueled RL-10 engine. With a view reminiscent of the Apollo Saturn V launches to the Moon 40 years ago, an upward facing camera on the first stage captured the sight of Centaur separation and ignition, and separation of the payload fairing seconds later. LRO will reach lunar orbit four days after launch and begin an anxious 40-minute thruster firing to slow itself down and enter lunar orbit instead of speeding past Earth's nearest neighbor and into interplanetary space. "Our most critical activity in this mission, we have do something just shy of an hour rocket burn to get captured into lunar orbit," said Craig Tooley, LRO Pproject Manager. "Atlas sends us to the Moon too fast, really. What happens is we escape the Earth's gravity and you're headed toward the Moon. You actually have to do a significant propulsive burn to slow down and get captured by the Moon." LRO will enter a preliminary orbit 18.5 by 134 miles. After checkout of all the spacecraft's systems, LRO will settle into a circular orbit 31 miles above the Moon. LCROSS will take a longer route to the Moon, arriving sometime in October. LCROSS will send the empty Atlas' Centaur stage crashing into a polar crater in an effort to detect the presence of water in the permanently shadowed craters at the Moon's poles. LCROSS consists of the Centaur stage, the "impactor" and a smaller shepherding spacecraft built around the Atlas rocket's payload attachment fitting that normally houses small secondary payloads. The shepherding spacecraft will guide the impactor on a precise trajectory toward the floor of the target crater and then separate so that it can observe and measure the effects of the impact. "We are hoping to excavate about 350 metric tons of material up above an altitude that's greater than 10 kilometers. Over 50 percent of it will just go plop. It'll just be a blanket. We can only see any of the material that gets above the crater rim," said Kimberly Ennico, LCROSS payload scientist. "We know from Lunar Prospector that there's hydrogen within the top meter. The neutrons that are detected can only actually be emitted or escape from approximately the top 70 or 100 centimeters of regolith. So from the get-go we know there is at least something bearing hydrogen in the top meter of lunar regolith," said Tony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist. LCROSS's shepherding spacecraft will follow the Centaur to the surface 4 minutes after impact, sending its own debris cloud into the vacuum above the Moon. "We've actually spaced the spacecraft observation point, in part, to address hazards to our spacecraft. For example, we didn't want to observe it from just a two-minute separation because that would have been a little too personal. But also we considered things like filling our instrument apertures properly. So that's how we came up with this four-minute separation," said Colaprete. LRO will observe the impacts, along with Earth-orbiting spacecraft, ground stations and the Hubble Space Telescope. (The Spacearium / Space Media Corporation)
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