NASA’s Newest Lunar Probe Begins Orbiting Moon

NASA’s newest lunar probe is now officially orbiting the moon. LADEE was launched into space while sitting atop the first flight of the Minotaur V rocket from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft completed its month-long journey on Sunday and will now collect data samples from the moon’s thin atmosphere and lunar dust.

NASA engineers completed an engine burn on Sunday which took the spacecraft into orbit with the moon.

Only 600 NASA officials are currently on the job because of the government shutdown, among those workers are LADEE employees who remained because of the crucial orbiting steps for the $280 million mission.

Before it made its way to the moon LADEE (“Laddie) performed three elliptical orbits around the Earth, moving into a higher orbit on each pass around the planet.

After the moon’s gravity took over the LADEE spacecraft performed its big burn and transferred around to lunar orbit.

Before the checkout phase can begin LADEE must complete two more lunar orbit insertion maneuvers. NASA has scheduled the next burn for Wednesday and a third is scheduled for Saturday. Once those burns occur LADEE will sit at 155 miles above the Moons surface.

The checkout period will allow NASA scientists to test the spacecrafts laser-communication demonstration. The laser technology aboard LADEE is aimed at sending large amounts of data back to Earth.

Once the commissioning phase is complete the probe will perform 100 days of science experiments aimed at studying the moon’s atmosphere and moon dust.

Studying the moon’s atmosphere is important because surface boundary exosphere’s are the most common kind of atmosphere in the solar system. Mercury for example plays host to the same type of thin atmosphere.