Lunar surveyor satellite ready for launch NASA has announced completion of thermal vacuum testing on its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which will map landing sites on the Moon for America's planned new wave of manned space exploration. Launching next year, the LRO will orbit the Moon just 30 miles up, allowing it to scan the surface with great precision. The …
If LRO is going to cover the whole surface of the moon in a polar orbit then there's no need to go back to the original site - there will soon be a whole load of pictures showing it from 30 miles up, and since LRO carries essentially the same kit as the wildly successful Mars Reconaissance Orbiter those pictures will be of extremely high quality.
Of course, as soon as the first shot of a lunar rover or the remains of a lunar lander are published there are those who will immediately yell "Photoshopped!!!", but even if NASA sent a mission back to the original landing site these same people would insist that it was all done with CGI.
Ah I see they need to get to the moon before the Chinese and quickly plant a flag just to prove that the 1st wasn't shot on a sound stage ;)
Crackpot conspiracies aside, it's nice to hear about more involved space exploration of this sort, let's just hope the funding holds out till 2020 and isn't diverted to another crackpot war.
"The LRO will share its ride with another Moon mission, an impact probe called the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite."
Houston: Ok, lets shoot the Impact probe at that there crater
Technician: Initiate firing in 3, 2, 1
AMES Technician: Hey, we just the main mapping camera from the LRO, now we have lost everything. What did you texan coboys do?
Houston: err Technician, when you programmed the test
IF isLRO() = FALSE then
EXEC FIRE_ME_AT_THE_MOON
END
You did define FALSE as -1? Our Atlas launch system uses zero and positive as TRUE.
Surprisingly, the Moon is not as accurately mapped (particularly with altimetry data) as Mars.
LRO instrumentation is not related to Mars Express. MEX was actually loaded with left-over European-built instruments from the failed Soviet Mars-96 mission. Most of the high quality Mars mapping data is from the Mars Global Surveyer, which orbited for ten years and had a laser altimeter. LRO is closely related to the Mars Recon. Orbiter that is currently circling that planet.
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