The Moon Blog » Robotic Exploration

LRO and LCROSS launched

Trond — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:00:55 +0000

LRO and LCROSS was launched yesterday, in what appears to be a picture-perfect launch. LRO will reach the Moon Tuesday 23. June, and will start conducting its scientific experiments after a short commissioning phase. LCROSS will take a slightly different trajectory, and will impact the Moon 9. October.

The launch has been widely reported in international media, here are a few random links: USA, Germany, UK, France, Norway, Australia. I’ll add more links as I come across them.

White Label Space joins GLXP

Admin — Sun, 10 May 2009 11:22:25 +0000

White Label Space has joined the Google Lunar X Prize, read more here: http://www.lunarexplorers.net/node/668, and here: http://www.whitelabelspace.com/2009/05/white-label-space-joins-google-lunar-x.html.

Best of luck to the new team!

Orbiting the Moon

Trond — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:45:42 +0000

After a long period with very low activity around the Moon, a multitude of robotic lunar exploration projects have been been launched the last years, and even more missions are coming in the near future. The roboti exploration party started in the 90′s with Hiten (1990) from JAXA and Clementine (1994) and Lunar Prospector (1998) from NASA, and they were followed up by Smart-1 (2003) from ESA. Data from these missions have among other things been used to produce accurate gravity maps, mineral distribution maps and medium resolution surface maps.

Currently there are two operational spacecraft in orbit around the Moon, Kaguya (2007) from JAXA and Chang’e-1 (2007) from CNSA. The main objective of both these spacecraft is to produce high resolution maps of the moon (gravitatinal and magnetic fields, mineral distribution, 2d and 3d topographical maps).

ISRO will launch Chandrayaan this autumn and NASA will launch the LRO and LCROSS in November. Both missions will complement the ongoing mapping and science objectives of Kaguya and Chang’e-1. Roskosmos will launch Luna-Glob in 2009, CNSA will allegedly launch a Chang’e-1follow-up in 2009, ISRO is planning to launch Chandrayaan-II in 2010 and NASA will launch Grail and LADEE in 2011. Other missions are planned but have not yet received funding.