I made an animation of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launch and trip to the Moon, based on the original launch date of Oct. 28:

LRO animation (93MB mpg file)


It's a large file, but the server bandwidth is pretty good, so download times shouldn't be too bad. Earth imagery is from Blue Marble and Moon imagery is from Clementine.

I understand that the actual trajectory varies a lot based on launch date, so I'll update this if new SPICE kernels are released.

That is novel! Very nice, and provides a great perspective on why the ground track for such a Earth departure "loops back" on itself.

I'm still trying to figure out how lunar orbit was achieved though...looked for all the "Moon" as if it was heading right for the center of the Moon; maybe was just the viewing angle?

Airbag

Just the viewing angle, which was fixed at the nadir view (as if the observer keeps turning to face the center of the globe), so it looks like it's coming right at you, except that the subpoint starts sliding faster and faster, towards the south pole in this case. LRO is intended to come in over the south pole at about 90W longitude.

It would have been more intuitive to show the view along the velocity vector of LRO, but it turns out that the Moon isn't visible along that vector for most of the flight (at the 20 degree field of view at least).

OK, I changed the ending of the animation to show more clearly what's going on with the LRO orbit. I also changed the song to something I actually have permission to use , "Epicentre" by a group called Carbon Based Lifeforms:

LRO movie (95MB mpg file)

That was a great trip ! Thanks captain ... wow

As the tripped-out reporter said in Where the Buffalo Roam, "It's my turn to fly."

a few days left: http://planetary.org/special/messages/lro.html