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NASA Set To Launch Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2008

19 May 2006

Orbiter is first step to returning people to Earth's moon, space agency says

Washington -- After 30 years, NASA has decided to take the first steps toward sending people back to the moon.

Space agency officials authorized implementation of the space agency's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) project May 17 for launch in 2008, according to a May 18 NASA press release.

NASA's Vision for Space Exploration calls for astronauts to return to the moon by 2020 and eventually to set up an outpost as a step toward Mars and beyond. (See related article.)

The LRO is designed to help make this possible.  After a four-day trip to the moon, the orbiter will map the moon's surface from an average altitude of 48 kilometers and characterize future landing sites in terms of terrain roughness, usable resources and radiation environment, with the ultimate goal of helping return people to the moon.

During its yearlong initial mission, some of the LRO's most important measurements will involve characterizing deep-space radiation in lunar orbit, determining the global topography, mapping sources of hydrogen, mapping temperatures in shadowed regions near the poles and imaging the surface in permanently shadowed regions.

The LRO also will try to identify deposits of near-surface water in polar cold traps, assess features for potential future landing sites -- the largest unknown in present knowledge of lunar resources -- and characterize the availability of sunlight in the polar region (for constant solar power).

The instruments will generate a global map of the moon to determine which potential landing sites are free from hazards, measure light and temperature patterns at the moon's poles, search for potential resources such as water, and assess the deep-space radiation environment and its potential effects on humans.

The orbiter is being built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Various organizations in the United States and one in Russia are providing its six instruments.

The next spacecraft milestone is a critical design review, scheduled for later in 2006.  This review represents the completion of detailed system designs and marks the transition into the manufacturing, assembly and integration phase of the mission development cycle.

The full text of the press release and more information about NASA's Vision for Space Exploration and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission are available at the NASA Web site.

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)