Moon Launch: NASA Sends Unmanned Rocket (VIDEO)

(The Associated Press)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA launched its first moon shot in a decade Thursday, sending up a pair of unmanned science probes that will help determine where astronauts could land and set up camp in years to come.

The liftoff occurred just one month and two days shy of the 40th anniversary of the first lunar footprints. The mission is a first step in NASA's effort to return humans to the moon by 2020.

Watch the launch:

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Scientists cheered as the Atlas V rocket carrying the two spacecraft blasted off in late afternoon, ducking through clouds and providing an exhilarating start to the $583 million mission.

"It was amazing," said John Keller, a deputy project scientist.

The two spacecraft should reach the moon in four to five days _ or by early next week. One will enter into an orbit around the moon for a mapping mission. The other will swing past the moon and go into an elongated orbit around Earth that will put it on course to crash into a crater at the moon's south pole in October.

NASA expects the dramatic moon-impacting part of the mission to be "a smashing success." It's a quest to determine whether frozen water is buried in one of the permanently shadowed craters. Water would be a tremendous resource for pioneering astronauts.

"We're going to be doing some lunar prospecting, if you will, excavation style," said project manager Dan Andrews.

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It's an unusual two-for-one moon shot.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will provide a high-precision, three-dimensional map of the lunar surface. It will circle the lunar poles and, via its seven science instruments, provide a new atlas of the moon as well as a guidebook for future explorers.

When it comes time to launch astronauts to the moon, NASA wants to avoid putting them down on an uneven surface, near boulders or in a crater.

"The Apollo program accepted risk and was able to have safe landings," said Richard Vondrak, project scientist for the orbiter. "But we want to return to the moon, make repeated landings in some areas, and be able to go there with a higher degree of safety."

The second probe, called the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, will be aiming for a spectacular smashup that should be visible from the United States.

"How do you get something that's been in the dark for maybe a billion or 2 billion years out to study it?" said Anthony Colaprete, the principal investigator.

Answer: Impact the bottom of the shadowed crater with the satellite's spent upper-stage Centaur rocket, more than 5,000 pounds of dead weight careening in at 5,600 mph.

LCROSS, pronounced L-Cross, will drop the Centaur into the targeted crater. The impact will send a plume of ejected material up into the sunlight, vaporizing any ice and exposing any traces of water. Previous spacecraft have detected hydrogen in these craters, which could be evidence of frozen water.

The plume of ejected material _ more than 350 tons of soil and rock _ should rise as high as six miles.

The trailing LCROSS will fly through the plume, take measurements, send the data to Earth, then crash into the surface four minutes after the Centaur, creating a second plume of debris.

The impacts and plumes should be visible to observers in the United States, west of the Mississippi River, using 10- to 12-inch telescopes. The Hubble Space Telescope will monitor the event, as well as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, still circling the moon.

In a novel touch, NASA has a song to go with the impact mission, "Water on the Moon," written and performed by deputy project manager John Marmie, a song-writing engineer who once considered a music career in Nashville, Tenn. The rock 'n' roll tune begins with a short countdown and the sound of a launching rocket.

The moon shot _ NASA's first since the 1998 launch of Lunar Prospector _ should have gotten under way Wednesday. But the space agency wanted to give shuttle Endeavour one last crack at taking off on a space station mission; a recurring hydrogen gas leak halted the countdown.

___

On the Net:

NASA: http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission(underscore)pages/LRO/main/index.html

Comments

[FrozenNorthObserver]

some pics of the old landing sites would be a great PR opportunity for NASA. Pics of the flag and the moon buggy would make the front pages of papers world wide. Be a great reminder to the population of what the nation is capable of accomplishing in these trying times.

[SonofLiberty1]

Here is another way of looking at spending on space...

Lets look at auto manufactur­ers...let'­s look at our Big 3...
For most of my life and my parents, America built cars and other nations couldn't compete.
Then, over a period of time, these American companies got fat and happy...Am­ericans bought a new car every 3 or 5 years...an­d of course they didn't last long either.

So along comes Toyota and they have a different idea... Build a good car that will last 200,000 miles or more in about 10 years....

And look what happened..­..

The Car Companies that went with the idea of using new technology to make a longer lasting car...a great product...­that company didn't go down the drain.

In other words....

If you don't build it or come up with it before someone else does...you lose and lose big.

Today, other nations have space programs and other nations are thinking and working on going to the moon...

No one has been to Mars however...

So, what do you think will happen?

If we don't do it, someone else will, and that effort, those jobs and that technology that makes it possible will go to some other nation...

And not ours....

And if we don't , your lifestyle will change....

[jsarets]

Another thing to remember is that China is going to the moon regardless of whether America has the political will to go there again.

Since Apollo, America has maintained unquestionable leadership in space capability, an advantage that lets our military rely more heavily on satellite communications than they otherwise could.

But pretty soon we're going to have to buy rides on Russian Soyuz spacecraft because the Shuttles have reached the end of their lives and we won't have a manned spacecraft until 2013 on the most optimistic schedule.

Today's LRO/LCROSS mission launched on an Atlas V rocket, which uses a Russian RD-180 engine for the first stage because we halted our high-thrust liquid rocket engine development after Saturn V, and our current engines are overpriced and underpowered.

The Russians and even the Europeans are killing us the commercial launch market. Boeing had to pull Delta IV from the commercial market because only the Pentagon would pay $200 million when Russian Protons and Zenits or the EU's Ariane 5 lift the same payload for $50 million.

My point is, we're not too many years away from another Sputnik moment, when we realize that we've lost our leadership in space and other nations are pulling away from us. There's a whole rest of the world out there that won't stop reaching for the stars just because America has become complacent.

[SonofLiberty1]

It never ceases to amaze me the sheer ignorance of some folks and the arrogance they display.

[Pleneras]

As much as I love science and discovery, I cannot comprehend why this program is not halted until our economy recovers! How much did this cost? Can't they spend the money in figuring out the several garbage islands on earth?

Stop this waste of money till the economy recovers!

[SonofLiberty1]

May I ask your age?

[HeWhoReads]

Your heart is in the right place, but NASA and space exploration is our future. If you don't know that I don't know how to explain it to you.

Put your energy into calling for a stop to the reckless spending in our three wars, or bailouts that give billions to banks.

[jsarets]

It's not a waste of money. The space program provides high-paying jobs for tens of thousands of American workers. The recession is really about not enough money being spent to keep everybody employed. Surely the solution isn't to lay off thousands of workers, many of them highly skilled in a specialized field.

[zerotimes10]

Germany is kicking our ass with OUR technology. Alternative Fuels is the future of not only wealth but survival.

[AtheistUS]

When this chicken exit egg, it must start reading and thinking.

[Peacein09]

Hurray NASA!!! If we can find water on the moon we may be able to avoid a future where water is rationed.

[fiorastar]

How exciting! It was watching the Apollo missions when I was a child that inspired me to become an engineer!

[jsarets]

Exactly. A whole generation of young engineers and scientists were inspired by Apollo, and they are now approaching retirement age. What will happen to the American technology base when they're gone? We've raised a couple generations of bankers and lawyers, and all they do is make everything more expensive.

[fiorastar]

Well, I'm working on a project right now to teach more of them--and the ones I want to teach are women.

[bbobby]

Yeah, and the monarchs in Europe in the 1500s should never have funded any of the explorations they did - they should have used that money to help feed the poor in their countries. Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal should never have ventured forth to explore any other territory than where they were born. Exploration and adventure are a deeply rooted human characteristic - it's what we do. If humans throughout history had waited until everything was perfect where they were before they left to look at something new they never would have left on their trips. That's part of the reason to go looking elsewhere - it might be better, or at least provide something better for those back home. Science and exploration is never a waste of money.

[SonofLiberty1]

That's right...

What if Columbus came to the New World once and never returned?

What if those first humans in Africa, never traveresed that first hill?

Exploration is part of the human condition.­..

What do you think TRAVEL is???

[timewaster2dcore]

What a waste of resources? Who is that supposed to help? Some people actually think that it is beneficial because "we might have to go and live on the Moon one day". Yeah right! That's what excessive watching of Star Trek has done to you.

Why aren't the "fiscal conservatives" talking now? Because they are tools. A large amount of resources as this could be used to launch useless rockets, but can't be used to cover more people's healthcare needs. Also, Obama can't go to New York to have some relaxation after hard work because he would be wasting taxpayer's dollars, but millions could be shipped to the Moon where no one is using it.

This is not even for national security reasons, just for some fruitless adventure through taxpayer's money. Good way to flush taxpayer's dollars down the drain, especially now that it's hard to get that money.

[SonofLiberty1]

Do you know how the Environmental Movement really started?

Right after Apollo 8 Circumnavigated the moon and brought back a photo of a desolate world, surrounded by blackness, with a tiny fragile blue white planet in the background.

That's what started it.

Too bad that you were not able to see it or not smart enough to comprehend it.

[timewaster2dcore]

Crap!! I am not asking you how "Environmental Movement" started? And for your information, those were done with satellites, not rockets as you think. And those satellites are also serving national security roles. I am not against spending on national security satellites, however, I am cynical about sending "missions" to the extraterrestrial bodies. They are a waste of money.

[AtheistUS]

Brilliant example of ignorance and arrogance.

[timewaster2dcore]

Really? Give me examples of the benefits of sending unmanned mission to the Moon.

[SonofLiberty1]

Yes pretty sickening isn't it?

[frantaylor]

Only by looking at other celestial bodies do we understand our own. We cannot put the things that we see into context without something to compare with. We learn about the moon because it helps us to learn about the earth. What we learn about the earth will help all people to live better.

The money that we have spent on NASA over the years has been repaid over and over again with the resulting research.

We don't go to the moon to go to the moon. We go to the moon because we will discover many things about ourselves and our universe in the process. We won't learn these things unless we stretch the limits of what we know and do things that we have not done before.

You can talk about cheaper ways to do this or that, but when you look at the return on the dollar spent, NASA is the best deal in government.

[jsarets]

Right on.

Depending on assumptions and data sources, for every one dollar spent on the space program, $7-9 of economic activity are created. With the exception of education, no government spending program has a stimulus multiplier that even comes close to that of the space program.

I sympathize with those who would rather spend money on handouts for the poor, but the space program creates high-paying jobs, drives technological innovation, promotes scientific discovery, and encourages scholastic achievement.

Maybe we wouldn't have as many poor people if we were a little more ambitious as a society. President Kennedy said we don't go to the moon because it's easy, we go because it's hard. Taking on the hard challenges is what puts people to work and creates economic opportunity.

[randyw]

To anyone that wants to bitch about money spent on the space program ...You need to realize that everything You have today is BECAUSE of the space program...­there would be no cell phones or computers or even video games without the scientific research that NASA has done....ev­en teflon coating on pans was because of NASA...and your updated weather reports...­the next time You want to bitch about the space program just throw away your cell phone your computer and your flat screen tv and go live in a cave...

[thinkfreemind]

I don't believe that any science program such as NASA is a waste of money. However, I do wish our government had the gumption to admit that we never did land on the moon the first time though. While they're at it, they can come clean about a bunch of other things as well, though I hesitate to say what all those things are at the risk of sounding like a nut. At any rate, I'd also like to see further formal exploration of our own planet, particularly the oceans.

[omechengineeru]

Hate to burst your bubbles but science is NEVER a waste of money. How can you put a monetary value on knowledge and the revaluations that sprout from these things? Besides homelessness and poverty wouldn't be solved if we didn't spend money on NASA ..

[Voodude]

They dropping anyone off from Guantanamo?

[NWBrunette]

Was there room for Newt?

[NYC07]

They could have sent his brain as it's empty and therefore weighs nothing.

[jsarets]

This is a photo of both payloads stacked inside half of the faring.

http://lro.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/hardware/051509a.jpg

The diameter at the base is 10.5 ft. I think Newt could have fit in the nose of the faring, but it's unpressurized, so he would have surely died within the first two minutes of the ascent.