NASA Set to Launch New Unmanned Lunar Mission, 'LADEE'

NASA announced Thursday an upcoming mission to the moon set for a launch in September to collect information about the lunar atmosphere as well dust movements.

The space agency is currently occupied in the final preparations for the launch of the small car-sized robotic explorer called Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer dubbed LADEE, which according to the sources, will be unmanned. The probe is set to launch on September 6 at 11.27 p.m. EDT Friday, from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallop Island, Va.

The small car sized robotic probe will orbit the moon and accumulate data on the structure and composition of the thin lunar atmosphere and also determine whether the dust is being flung into the lunar sky. LADEE will not only help researchers understand characteristics of the Moon but also offer clues about the other existing bodies in the solar system such as Mercury, asteroids and moons that belong to the outer planets.

 "The moon's tenuous atmosphere may be more common in the solar system than we thought," John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington, said in a news release. "Further understanding of the moon's atmosphere may also help us better understand our diverse solar system and its evolution."

LADEE, which will be launched on a U.S. Air Force Minotaur V rocket, is the first spacecraft that is designed, developed, built, integrated and tested at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. Apart from this, the probe is the first launch beyond Earth's orbit from Virginia Space Coast launch facility.

Made up of lightweight carbon composite that weighs 547.2 pounds and 844.4pounds when fully fueled, the LADEE structure was built using Ames-developed Modular Common Spacecraft Bus architecture. After a month's launch, the probe will kick-start its 100 -day science phase to gather information of the lunar atmosphere. It will measure the variations in the chemical composition of the atmosphere as well analyze the samples of lunar dust particles.

With this data the researchers hope to answer the long prevailing question: Was lunar dust, electrically charged by sunlight, responsible for the pre-sunrise glow above the lunar horizon detected during several Apollo missions?

Butler Hine, LADEE project manager at Ames said, "The LADEE mission demonstrates how it is possible to build a first class spacecraft at a reduced cost while using a more efficient manufacturing and assembly process."