LCROSS
LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) — a NASA mission that found water on the Moon. On 9 October 2009 it steered its spent Centaur rocket stage into Cabeus, a permanently shadowed crater near the south pole, then flew through the plume of debris for about four minutes before striking the Moon itself. Its instruments saw water in the plume, along with other compounds.
Key facts
Mission & specifications
Mission
- Operator
- NASA
- Launched
- June 18, 2009
- Status
- Completed
Trajectory
- Speed rel. the Moon
- 830 m/s
- Computed from the cached state vector, relative to the Moon
- Distance from the Sun
- 1 AU
- Computed from the cached position
- Distance from Earth
- 0.354 AU
- Computed from cached positions
- Distance from Venus
- 0.384 AU
- Computed from cached positions
Mission
LCROSS, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, was launched with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on an Atlas V on 18 June 2009. Its plan was simple and brutal: to use the rocket's spent Centaur upper stage, some 2,000 kg, as a projectile, fire it into a permanently shadowed crater near the Moon's south pole, and look for water in what it threw up. After passing the Moon on 23 June it spent more than three months on long Earth orbits, the shepherding spacecraft steering the Centaur attached to it. On 9 October they separated, and at 11:31 UTC the Centaur struck the crater Cabeus at about 2.5 km/s. The shepherding spacecraft followed a few minutes behind, flying through the plume of debris for about four minutes and sending back images and spectra before it too struck the Moon at 11:35 UTC. NASA announced that the mission had found water, in places as mostly pure ice crystals, and that the soil of Cabeus was rich in other substances too, among them mercury, magnesium, calcium, silver and sodium.
- 2009LCROSS launches toward the Moon on an Atlas V rocketLaunch
With the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Its pull sends LCROSS and its Centaur stage into long orbits around Earth.
- 2009The Centaur strikes CabeusMilestone
At 11:31 UTC and about 2.5 km/s, in a permanently shadowed crater near the south pole.
- 2009LCROSS strikes the MoonMission end
About four minutes after the Centaur, having flown through the plume it threw up.
Images
Images from open archives · credit shown per image