Mission Wil Seek Water Ice on Moon
NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and
Sensing Satellite, known as LCROSS, is enroute from Northrop
Grumman's facility in Redondo Beach, Calif., to NASA's Kennedy
Space Center in Florida in preparation for a spring launch.
The satellite's primary mission is to search for water ice on
the moon in a permanently shadowed crater near one of the lunar
poles. LCROSS is a low-cost, accelerated-development, companion
mission to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO. At Kennedy,
the two spacecraft will be integrated with an Atlas V launch
vehicle and tested for final flight worthiness. LCROSS and LRO are
the first missions in NASA's plan to return humans to the moon and
begin establishing a lunar outpost by 2020.
After launch, the LCROSS spacecraft and the Atlas V's Centaur
upper stage rocket will fly by the moon and enter into an elongated
orbit to position the satellite for impact. On final approach, the
spacecraft and Centaur will separate. The Centaur will strike the
chosen lunar crater, creating a debris plume that will rise above
the surface. Four minutes later, LCROSS will fly through the debris
plume, collecting and relaying data back to Earth before striking
the moon's surface and creating a second debris plume. Scientists
will use data from the debris clouds to determine the presence or
absence of water ice.
"The LCROSS project has had to work within very challenging
cost-cap and schedule-cap constraints," said Dan Andrews, LCROSS
project manager at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field,
CA. "The shipping of our spacecraft is a testament to our balanced
approach and the great people working on this project."
To remain within budget and a short schedule of 26 months, the
LCROSS project team developed a simple yet innovative spacecraft
that uses existing NASA systems, commercial-off-the-shelf
components modified to survive the harsh conditions of space, and
the spacecraft design and development expertise of integration
partner Northrop Grumman Space Technologies.
"LCROSS delivers a high science value per dollar," said Steve
Hixson, vice-president for advanced concepts at Northrop Grumman
Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach. "With its versatile, fast and
cost efficient architecture, the LCROSS spacecraft serves as a
pathfinder for future low-cost Earth and space science
missions."
LCROSS is scheduled for launch April 24... though,
as ANN reported earlier this week, that launch
could be delayed if the shuttle Discovery doesn't lift off before
the end of this month.