The highest speed it had was just when the Centaur shut down after lunar injection. It was then at 300 km altitude and at that point the escape velocity would be slightly lower than the quoted one of 11.2 km/s (which assumes you start from the ground). To reach moon you need something close to that, Apollo lunar flights for example ended burns at roughly the same altitude and at that time were going at 10.8 km/s and I assume that's roughly the same velocity LRO/LCROSS had.

Awesome indeed.

Have to admit I am getting all Moonie and nostalgic for the 60's unmanned missions that preceeded APOLLO.
And APOLLO.

LRO/LCROSS are going to be very cool missions...

NASA LRO Webcast
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yruN1iqeorw...292&index=7

LRO data will be made available to Google Moon. LCROSS October impact imaging data will be supplied live - like Ranger 9
in 1965.

GO LRO for LOI!

GO LCROSS... long wait til October...

Craig

Hello guys,
thought I would register now that LRO has launched successfully

Another cool video is on ULA's website (http://www.ulalaunch.com/)
direct link: http://www.ulalaunch.com/launch/LRO/LROLCR...hHighlights.wmv

I was lucky enough to be invited to the launch, and see it!
One of the pictures I took :

By the way, LRO has a blog with many updates about how it's doing and what's next:
http://lroupdate.blogspot.com/

Great!

I'm a little worried about the power drop. It's insignificant, but anyway..

The one thing I'm looking forward to more than anything else? Matching LROC images to the Soviet era map of the Lunokhod 1 route, to locate the old rover and its landing stage.

Phil

To what precision are these landing sites known? Will it be a problem for LRO?

We don't know exactly where it is - that's why i'm looking forward to it. There is no doubt about where the Apollos and most Surveyors are, but the Lunas are not precisely located. Luna 9 and 13 will be very hard to find, with tens of images needed to cover the uncertainty ellipses. And if they are imaged, they may not be very easy to identify among the rocks. But for Lunokhod 1, there is a candidate site about 5 km from the tracking position which might be it. Only one or a few images would be needed to search for it.

Phil

Just to compare - we still haven't located Mars Polar Lander, Beagle 2, Mars 6 and Mars 3. I expect we'll be searching Luna 9, 13 for years.

the positions of Luna 17 and 21 (or rather, their Lunokhod rovers) are fairly well known, from Lunar Laser Ranging (mostly used to monitor the position of the Apollo retro-reflectors). I think Luna 21 is the least constrained of the two.

No, it's the other way round, though some web sources have it wrong. Lunokhod 1 has not been detected with the laser since early in the mission, in 1970. Lunokhod 2 gives a weak reflection but can be used today. A search for Lunokhod 1 is being undertaken through JPL but the full lat-long-range space has not been sampled and could take quite a while, even assuming the reflector is usable. There is at least a 5 km uncertainty on Lunokhod 1's location, but as I said there is a candidate location (made by matching the Lunokhod 1 route map to the best images of the site, which are not very good). I hope the candidate position is correct, because I suggested it, but wherever it is it will be good to have it at last.

Phil

LCROSS - Streaming Video Coverage of the Lunar Swingby

LCROSS lunar swingby video stream coverage will begin approximately 5:20 a.m. PDT on Tuesday, June 23, 2009.

The LCROSS instrumentation will send back data to Earth for approximately one hour. The first 30 minutes will contain a view of the lunar surface from an altitude of approximately 9,000 km. The video feed is set to display one frame per second. During the latter 30 minutes, the spacecraft will perform multiple scans of the moon's horizon to calibrate its sensors. During this latter half hour, the video image will update only occasionally. The 3D visualization stream will show the spacecraft position and attitude throughout the swingby.

Camera Feeds
The live streaming coverage of the lunar swingby will consist of two separate video streams:
Live video feed from the spacecraft's visible light camera at one frame per second. Real-time, telemetry-based animation of the lunar swingby.


http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/l...ngby/index.html

Perhaps this should really go to a new thread for mission. We are certainly past launch.

Craig

Never mind... I see this is the thread for launch through ORBIT..

Old brain needs a tweak!!!

I too am looking forward to whatever old lunar landers and rovers the LRO can pick out.

Craig

Yep. ;-) The idea was to separate the discussion about launch and cruise from the discussion about the pictures. I thought that made sense, since a) the pre-launch thread had gotten to be pretty long and b) the cruise is so short.

But as soon as someone has actual moon pictures to play with, he or she should create a "Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission" thread (or something like that). At least, that was MY thinking. :-)

--Greg

Details about Lunar Gravity Assist Lunar Return Orbit (LGALRO) click here
LCROSS will perform 3 LGALRO, each lasts 38 days, before impacting to the Moon

http://lroupdate.blogspot.com/

The real need for a new thread is a dedicated LCROSS thread, I'd say. Pics in only a few days! Sounds like LROC pics will have to wait until about July 2nd.

Phil

As the first part of the question was answered, I'll go for the 2nd one.



LRO/LCROSS will begin to accelerate once they are within the moon's gravitational hill sphere, which has a radius of about 60,000 km.

Zvezdichko already created one -- LROC news and images -- a couple of days ago. Seems an appropriate place for LROC images, though a separate LCROSS topic may indeed be called for.

-the other Doug

NASA-Twitter reports that all systems perform wonderfully, which is great.

If you haven't taken a look yet, check out the LROC website. It's a great example of How A Mission Website Should Be Done. Clear, good links, looks great, the Outreach materials section is a goldmine, too :-)

http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/index.html

CAn't wait for the first images to appear in the gallery! :-)

Yes but some pages are clearly out of date....

"LROC images are not currently available, because the orbiter is still waiting for launch.
Once launched, the orbiter will began taking amazing pictures of the moon. "

Also why do we still need a "Launch Preview".

/padantic mode off

Well, that's half right... images aren't going to be available if they haven't been taken yet...

BTW, interesting snippet of info on collectSPACE re the resolving power of the camera:

According to Dr. Robinson in response to a question collectSPACE posed to him this afternoon, "The angular resolution [of the LROC] will be about 50 cm/pixel (dependent on the final orbit of course). We will definitely be able to spot the LM descent stages and Rovers."

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...t=0#entry142273 for discussion during LOI / LCROSS flyby.

Looks like we're safely in orbit now. Even though I started this thread, I don't see how to close it. Can a moderator do that for me?

Thanks!

--Greg