NASA Discovers Where LADEE Spacecraft Crash Landed

For months, it has remained a mystery as to where NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft crash landed, and now evidence of an impact crater has revealed the answer, providing scientists with some closure.

The agency's LADEE probe, a $280 mission, launched in September 2013 with the intent of studying the Moon's atmosphere and learning more about lunar dust. All around a success, the spacecraft ended its celestial journey with an intentional crash onto the Moon's surface on April 18.

Where LADEE went down exactly was unknown, until recently when NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) photographed a new lunar crater that researchers believe is its gravesite. LADEE's final resting place lies on the eastern rim of Sundman V crater on the far side of the Moon, just 0.2 miles (0.3 km) north of the spot where tracking data predicted the spacecraft would go down.

"I'm happy that the LROC team was able to confirm the LADEE impact point," Butler Hine, LADEE project manager at Ames Research Center in California, said in a press release. "It really helps the LADEE team to get closure and know exactly where the product of their hard work wound up."

It's a wonder the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) was able to spot the crater at all, given it was less than 10 feet (three meters) in diameter. It's extremely small size made it difficult for scientists to discern it from the myriad of small fresh craters on the lunar surface. The impact crater pales in comparison to other craters on the Moon because LADEE was not traveling very fast - approximately 3,800 miles per hour (1,699 meters per second) - and had a low mass and a low density. (Scroll to read on...)

The discovery is all thanks to LROC's new tool, called the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC), that compared before-and-after images of the same lunar sites, researchers said.

Even though LADEE is deceased, that doesn't mean our study of the Moon is over. LRO launched Sept. 18, 2009 and continues to bring the world amazing views of the lunar surface.

"With LRO, NASA will study our nearest celestial neighbor for at least two more years," said John Keller, LRO project scientist from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "LRO continues to increase our understanding of the Moon and its environment."