The spacecraft that was launched Friday night from Virginia is now thousands and thousands of miles away, NASA said. It is orbiting the Earth, in preparation for its mission of orbiting the moon. The spacecraft that was launched Friday night
The spacecraft that was launched Friday night from Virginia is now thousands and thousands of miles away, NASA said. It is orbiting the Earth, in preparation for its mission of orbiting the moon.
The robotic craft was sent on its mission of scientific exploration at 11:27 p.m. from the space flight facility at Wallops Island. It was lifted by a rocket that left a trail of fire across the night sky, to be seen all over the East Coast.
Known as LADEE, for Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, the spacecraft is now in an elliptical orbit around the Earth, about 160,000 miles up, NASA said.
It is going through the systems checkout phase, said Butler Hine, NASA’s LADEE project manager. It is run by NASA’s Ames Research Center in California.
“Everything looks good so far,” Hine said Monday by email.
At 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, the spacecraft reached the farthest point from Earth on its current orbit. On Friday at 12:38 p.m., it will make its closest approach, Hine said.
At that point, it will fire its on-board propulsion system to lift itself into another elliptical orbit. According to plans, it will orbit the Earth three times, then be captured by lunar gravity and eventually make its way into an orbit around the moon.
The science missions to be performed there include studies of lunar dust, of conditions near the lunar surface and of the moon’s atmosphere.
The moon does have an atmosphere, although it is far thinner than the Earth’s, NASA says. It is of interest in space exploration, NASA said, because similar atmospheres might be found elsewhere in the solar system. LADEE will determine its composition by analyzing the light waves generated by its atoms.
