LADEE Finally Arrives at Moon’s Orbit

NASA’s spacecraft LADEE finally arrived at the moon’s orbit on Sunday to give answer to questions about the source of the feebly lunar atmosphere and to display a laser communications system.

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft launched at 6:57 a.m EDT and traveled for four minutes, permitting the moon’s gravity to welcome it into a high-altitude orbit over the equator. Despite the government shutdown, controllers at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California continued with their operations.

LADEE’s mission is to penetrate a highly elliptical retrograde orbit taking the spacecraft around the moon every 24 hours. A couple of major orbit adjust burns are scheduled on October 9 and 12 to lessen the altitude of LADEE’s orbit, eventually reaching an orbit that is roughly 155 miles above the moon’s equator.

Greg Delroy, LADEE's deputy project scientist at Ames, told Space Flight, "The orbit around the moon is retrograde, meaning opposite the lunar rotation, and also around the equator. A lot of the lunar science missions have done a polar orbit, but because of the kind of science we're after, we very much want to be around the equator."

The spacecraft traveled for a month around the Earth and completed three loops before it reached the moon’s orbit.

When LADEE have reached the 155-mile-high orbit, ground teams will start commissioning the probe's three science instruments, turn on the spacecraft's laser communications package for a 30-day exhibition of high-speed optical communications, and deploy aperture covers from the sensors.

LADEE’s Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration will connect with ground stations in California, Canary Islands and New Mexico to exchange data packets at speeds unachievable with radio communications system.

The changes of the lunar exosphere, measuring its response to sunlight, especially around the terminator where the night and day side of the moon meet will be studied by LADEE’s science instrumentation.

The spacecraft will also search for signs water and hydroxyl, drifting from the moon’s middle latitudes to polar cold traps in permanent shadow, where scientists claim ice can last for billions of years.

Lastly, the mission’s dust particle sensor will classify dust concentrations in the space above the moon and help scientists know the mechanisms driving the dust particles from the surface.

The mission will end in early 2014 through an intentional crash into the moon after LADEE runs out of propellant.

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