LADEE Is Orbiting The Moon
Keith’s note: According to someone at NASA: “Early this morning (October 6), we fired LADEE’s main engine in a braking maneuver known as the Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) burn. This slowed the spacecraft’s velocity enough for it to be captured by the Moon’s gravity. This critical burn went flawlessly and LADEE is now in lunar orbit! Two more main engine burns, on October 9 and 12 will adjust LADEE’s trajectory, settling it into its commissioning orbit.”
LADEE Wikipedia Page
Nice to hear successful orbit insertion in the middle of govt shutdown. Congrats LADEE team!
This is the mission that could finally silence the ‘Apollo moon landings were a hoax’ idiots forever. See the ‘atmospheric glow’ section of the wikipedia page for Ladee. If this mission finds the ‘glows’ and ‘rays’, how could they possibly have been predicted if not by HUMAN eyes on the moon? No camera of any sort at the time would have had enough resolution or color capability to record this.
Dunno…even after very good imaging of the ‘Face on Mars’, RCH is still at it. And it’s entertaining as hell 🙂
Major congrats to the ladee team!!
We need a Scottish logo for the mission!
Aye in the Skye
orrrr perrrrhaps
Hoot Moon?
A great event for Ames Research Center! Their first in-house built space probe. Besides the lunar science, the spacecraft has a demonstration instrument – laser-based transmitter. This technology is the future of interplanetary telecommunications. And the spacecraft design will be re-used. Maybe a trip to Phobos or a near-earth asteroid. Congratulations to the LADEE engineers that persevered despite the muddling along of NASA management.