Whats so exciting about the NASA satellite entering the moon orbit?
The day after blasting off, NASA’s two lunar satellites are hurtling toward the moon. NASA reported on its Web site that all is going according to plan and that its flight operations team established communication with both satellites — the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite — hours after the launch on Tuesday afternoon. Both satellites were perched atop an Atlas V rocket that took off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 5:32 p.m. EDT on Thursday on a mission to help NASA prepare for its next human flight to the moon. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is expected to reach the moon at 5:43 a.m. EDT on Tuesday. It will then go into a low polar orbit about 31 miles above the moon’s surface. It’s expected to stay in that orbit for one year for its primary mission. The Reconnaissance Orbiter is designed to use seven onboard instruments to create high-resolution, three-dimensional maps of the moon’s surface. According to NASA,
WASHINGTON, June 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Two NASA spacecraft will reach major mission milestones early Tuesday morning as they approach the moon — one will send back live streaming imagery via the Internet as it swings by the moon, the other will insert itself into lunar orbit to begin mapping the moon’s surface. After a four and a half day journey to the moon, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, will be captured by the moon’s gravity and prepare for the commissioning phase of its mission on June 23. NASA TV live coverage of LRO’s orbit insertion begins at 5:30 a.m. EDT Tuesday, with the actual engine burn to begin orbit insertion starting at 5:47 a.m. Sources: http://sev.prnewswire.com/aerospace-defense/20090622/DC3637222062009-1.
