NASA's LADEE Spacecraft Enters Unique Lunar Orbit

Wednesday NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft entered a unique orbit around the Moon's equator, a position that will allow the small probe to make frequent passes between the lunar day and lunar night and collect data on the changes and processes occurring withing the Moon's weak atmosphere.

The LADEE spacecraft will orbit the Moon every two hours from an altitude as low as 8 miles above the lunar surface. The approximately 100 day mission will focus on assembling details about the structure and composition of Moon's tenuous atmosphere. A key detail LADEE will attempt to unveil is whether lunar dust is being lofted into the Moon's atmosphere.

Sarah Noble, LADEE program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said by better understanding the Moon, we can gain a better understanding of similar sized celestial bodies around the solar system.

"A thorough understanding of the characteristics of our lunar neighbor will help researchers understand other small bodies in the solar system, such as asteroids, Mercury, and the moons of outer planets," Noble said.

The LADEE mission will also re-explore the atmospheric conditions of the lunar sunrise and sunset, where previous crewed and robotic missions have detected a mysterious glow of rays and streamers across the lunar sky, NASA said.

"This is what we've been waiting for - we are already seeing the shape of things to come," said Rick Elphic, LADEE project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

LADEE mission engineers have their work cut out for them, however. Because of the Moon's lumpy gravitational field, the spacecraft will need a significant amount of maintenance activity, said Butler Hine, LADEE project manager at Ames. The changes in flightpath could happen every two or three days, or at intervals as long as two weeks

"LADEE will perform regular orbital maintenance maneuvers to keep the spacecraft's altitude within a safe range above the surface that maximizes the science return," Hines said.

The LADEE probe is also carrying NASA's first high-data-rate laser communications system, the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration, which is designed to enable satellite communications at speeds similar to fiber optic networks on Earth.