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The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), launched last week to survey the moon with an eye toward future human exploration, has reached lunar orbit. The spacecraft entered orbit today at 6:27 A.M. (Eastern Daylight Time), placing a NASA probe around the moon for the first time in nearly 10 years.

From its orbit 31 miles (50 kilometers) above the moon, LRO will make detailed maps of the lunar surface, including its poles, where astronauts would have access to consistent solar power and possibly even stores of water ice. A companion spacecraft launched with LRO, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, will make two lunar impacts this fall to seek out evidence of that water. LRO will contribute to that water hunt while also studying the moon's radiation environment and its potential health effects, among other investigations.

LRO joins a similar mission, India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, already in lunar orbit. Chandrayaan-1 carries a Mini-RF radar instrument, just as LRO does, and featured a lunar impactor probe that struck the moon in November.

Photo of LRO/LCROSS liftoff last week: NASA/Sandra Joseph, Tony Gray

7 Comments

1. 1. MisterA 04:51 AM 6/24/09

   I have a feeling there will be insufficient water on the moon to sustain a moonbase. This will be a setback initially but if nudging a comet is cheaper than dragging water out of our gravity well then it will push out the frontier a little further and sooner.

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2. 2. tharriss 08:14 AM 6/24/09

   Hey MisterA, as long as we don't nudge the comet in the wrong direction or screw something else up in the process... :-)
   
   I just don't see anyone doing anything like that politically any time soon, never mind the current state of the science possibilities. You'd have a tough time convincing politicians and the huddled masses it was a good idea to move a comet anywhere near earth. You could show charts and math and datapoint after datapoint, and people would still see only someone wanting to push a huge rock towards the sky above their house!

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3. 3. galaxy_man 12:13 PM 6/24/09

   Let's be fair though. Even if the politicians approved such an idea, they'd still cut funding to such a degree that we would be guaranteed to get it wrong. Oops, there goes Australia.

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4. 4. calevenice 12:14 PM 6/24/09

   Before worrying about a moon base, what about a space station orbiting the moon. That way we can also store enough water on the station to supply the moon base.

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5. 5. Ron 06:03 PM 6/24/09

   Could the expelled C.O.2. be filtered ; if it had have enough moisture left in it to run through a solar still to collect water from ,or has that been tried already ?

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6. 6. MikeJanarch 03:38 AM 6/25/09

   If it is found to be the case that there is no ice on the moon, can we then lay the idea aside of setting up housekeeping on the moon? I hope there is water there, and I think a moon lab would be a fine thing, but 99% of our problems and possibilities are located under our feet here, and until we have solved our very major problems we should forget about galavanting around the solar system.

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7. 7. JOCS 06:10 PM 7/2/09

   Hi Lunar Reconnaissance, could you send images of the lunar modules, please? We need to believe...

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