NASA’s Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter and Opportunity Rover Update – 5/26/09

With NASA’s ambitious Hubble repair mission behind us, it is time to take note of the next major mission to launch and mark an important milestone.  NASA’s Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter remains on track for its June 17th launch.  The LRO will substantially add to NASA’s knowledge of lunar polar conditions.  Space.com notes the following mission goals:

Using a suite of seven instruments, LRO will help identify safe landing sites for future human explorers, locate potential resources, characterize the radiation environment and test new technology.  The probe’s instruments will also allow scientists to explore the moon’s deepest craters, look beneath its surface for clues to the location of water ice, and identify and explore both permanently lit and permanently shadowed regions.

Joining the LRO in June will be the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. Its mission is to impact the moon in a crater. The resulting plume of lunar material will be studied by the LRO, Earth-based instruments and possibly the Hubble Space Telescope for possible water ice, as well as other chemical compounds.

I’m looking forward to the successful launch of LRO and LCROSS.

The Opportunity Rover on Mars passed a phenomenal milestone recently: it has traveled more than 10 miles to date over 5 years of operations!  That’s not bad for a rover that was designed to travel 1km over 1 year of operation.  I’ll say this for NASA: they like things to be spectacular.  Either spectacular successes or spectacular failures seem to be the result of missions – manned and unmanned.

Phoenix Landing A Success!

I just got home from my local natural science museum’s efforts to bring NASA’s Phoenix probe landing into the public. It was a success – both the museum’s agenda for the evening and the good news that Phoenix is in good health and operating nominally from Mars.

The Museum had Dr. Steve Lee, Curator of Planetary Science at the museum and a Research Scientist at the Space Science Institute present a mission overview. Kris Walsh, Director of NASA and Commercial Programs for Delta Launch Vehicles, United Launch Alliance, followed by talking about the Delta II launch system. Tim Halbrook finished the first part of the evening (prior to landing). He is a Senior Engineer, Remote Sensing & Exploration Systems at Lockheed Martin. Mr. Halbrook has been involved with every U.S. mission to Mars over the past 20 years.

The landing activities at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were broadcast over NASA TV and shown in multiple locations within the museum. Just as the coverage of Spirit and Opportunity, the two rovers that landed in January 2004, the coverage of Phoenix was very thrilling to experience. A lot of hard work went into ensuring a success and this team very nearly pulled off a perfect landing. Every aspect was well within operational ranges. The planning and practice paid off as no last second corrections or adaptations had to be exercised. Relief and excitement were evident from the team as each stage of the EDL (Entry, Descent, Landing) was checked off.