NASA's moon-orbiting robot crashes down

[Buster's Uncle]

NASA's moon-orbiting robot crashes down
Associated Press
By MARCIA DUNN  April 18, 2014 9:17 AM



In this artist's concept provided by NASA the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft is seen orbiting the moon as it prepares to fire its maneuvering thrusters to maintain a safe orbital altitude. NASA's small moon-orbiting spacecraft LADEE (pronounced LAH'-dee) is no more. Flight controllers confirmed early Friday April 18, 2014 that LADEE crashed into the back side of the moon. (AP Photo/NASA, Dana Berry) Credit: NASA Ames / Dana Berry



CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA's robotic moon explorer, LADEE, is no more.

Flight controllers confirmed Friday that the orbiting spacecraft crashed into the back side of the moon as planned, just three days after surviving a full lunar eclipse, something it was never designed to do.

Researchers believe LADEE likely vaporized upon contact because of its extreme orbiting speed of 3,600 mph, possibly smacking into a mountain or side of a crater. No debris would have been left behind.

"It's bound to make a dent," project scientist Rick Elphic predicted Thursday.

By Thursday evening, the spacecraft had been skimming the lunar surface at an incredibly low altitude of 300 feet. Its orbit had been lowered on purpose last week to ensure a crash by Monday following an extraordinarily successful science mission.

LADEE — short for Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer — was launched in September from Virginia. It completed its primary 100-day science mission last month and was on overtime.

The extension had LADEE flying during Tuesday morning's lunar eclipse; its instruments were not designed to endure such prolonged darkness and cold. But the small spacecraft survived — it's about the size of a vending machine — with just a couple pressure sensors acting up.

The mood in the control center at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., was upbeat late Thursday afternoon, according to project manager Butler Hine.

"Having flown through the eclipse and survived, the team is actually feeling very good," Hine told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

But he uncertainty of the timing of LADEE's demise had the flight controllers "on edge," he said.

"Each orbit could be the last one and you don't know. It's kind of a crapshoot," Hine said. "So I'd say everybody's in good spirits, but there's that uncertainty. Is it going to happen next hour or three hours from now or are we going to make it all the way through Sunday?"

As it turns out, LADEE succumbed within several hours of Hine's comments. The obituary announcement came early Friday morning, Eastern Time.

It will be at least a day or two before NASA knows precisely where the spacecraft ended up; the data cutoff indicates it smashed into the far side of the moon, although just barely.

LADEE did not have enough fuel to remain in lunar orbit beyond mission's end and keep collecting science. So from the outset, NASA planned to crash the spacecraft into the back side of the moon, far from the Apollo artifacts left behind during the moonwalking days of 1969 to 1972.

During its $280 million mission, LADEE identified various components of the thin lunar atmosphere — neon, magnesium and titanium, among others — and studied the dusty veil surrounding the moon, created by all the surface particles kicked up by impacting micrometeorites.

"LADEE's science cup really overfloweth," Elphic said earlier this month. "LADEE, by going to the moon, has actually allowed us to visit other worlds with similar tenuous atmospheres and dusty environments."

___

Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ladee/main/index.html


http://news.yahoo.com/nasas-moon-orbiting-robot-crashes-down-111819551.html

[Buster's Uncle]

RIP LADEE: NASA Moon Probe Crashes Into Lunar Surface
SPACE.com
by Miriam Kramer, Staff Writer  April 18, 2014 11:00 AM



Near mission's end, NASA's LADEE is soon to bite the dust, will purposely smash into the moon's far side.



NASA's newest moon probe met its end during a vaporizing crash into the lunar surface last night.

The space agency's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer spacecraft (LADEE for short) made its planned crash into the lunar surface between 12:30 a.m. EDT (0430 GMT) and 1:22 a.m. EDT (0522 GMT) on April 18, after orbiting the moon since October 2013. Scientists expected the impact, predicting that LADEE would hit the far side of the moon on or before April 21 because the probe was running out of fuel — as intended.

The impact itself was probably a violent event. NASA engineers think that the loveseat-sized probe broke apart as most of it heated up to several hundred degrees. It's even possible that some of the material from the spacecraft vaporized during the crash, NASA officials said in a statement.

"At the time of impact, LADEE was traveling at a speed of 3,600 miles per hour [5,800 km/h] — about three times the speed of a high-powered rifle bullet," Rick Elphic, LADEE project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, said in a statement. "There's nothing gentle about impact at these speeds — it's just a question of whether LADEE made a localized craterlet on a hillside or scattered debris across a flat area. It will be interesting to see what kind of feature LADEE has created."

NASA will use another probe still orbiting the moon to seek out LADEE's crash site and learn more about the impact. Scientists will use the space agency's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to try to snap a picture of the LADEE impact site. The site itself is not viewable from Earth, and it is far from any area where previous moon landings occurred, NASA officials said.

Before its impact, LADEE dropped down to altitudes below 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) above the surface of the moon, allowing researchers to collect unprecedented data, NASA officials said.

"LADEE was a mission of firsts, achieving yet another first by successfully flying more than 100 orbits at extremely low altitudes," said Joan Salute, LADEE program executive at NASA headquarters in Washington. "Although a risky decision, we're already seeing evidence that the risk was worth taking.”

The $280 million LADEE mission launched to space in September 2013 to investigate the moon's thin atmosphere and help scientists learn more about lunar dust. In particular, the spacecraft was designed to investigate a moon dust mystery that dates back to before the Apollo era.

During the Apollo missions, some astronauts saw a glow on the horizon before sunrise as they orbited above the moon's surface. Earlier NASA probes also caught sight of that distinct glow. Scientists think that particles of dust lofted into the thin lunar atmosphere (called an exosphere) may have caused the glow; however, data collected by LADEE has not yet confirmed this theory.

LADEE also helped scientists learn more about the moon's exosphere. Researchers think that exospheres are the most common type of atmosphere in the solar system, so learning more about the lunar atmosphere could tell researchers more about other bodies in the solar system, like Mercury.

The small probe also survived the total lunar eclipse on April 14 to 15, making it through the low temperatures and battery drain it experienced when out of direct sunlight.

"It's bittersweet knowing we have received the final transmission from the LADEE spacecraft after spending years building it in-house at Ames, and then being in constant contact as it circled the moon for the last several months," Butler Hine, LADEE project manager at Ames, said in a statement.


http://news.yahoo.com/rip-ladee-nasa-moon-probe-crashes-lunar-surface-150016267.html

[Geo]

Another one fell victim to the dark side of the Moon?