NASA Begins Work on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

soldeed writes "Space.com is reporting the beginning of construction on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Which is scheduled for launch in late fall of 2008. It will orbit the moon at fifty kilometers and image the entire surface at high resolution. A far Ultraviolet instrument will enable it to see into areas permanently in shadow and see if there is indeed ice there. LRO will count craters and image American and Soviet landing sites."

Comments

A hoax indeed

[Mrs. Grundy]

FTFA: Take note. For you "Apollo landings were a hoax" believers LROC's sightseeing abilities should set the record straight...

Like I'm going to buy that. If they could fake the whole dog and pony show in the 60's do they really think we're so guallible as to beleive they can't doctor a few images? Like NASA doesn't have photoshop.

On a more serious note, when I read these amazing stories I can't help think of Hamlet:

What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me;

Here we are performing these amazing feats of technology while down on the ground we are firebombing each other, mincing words about what is and isn't torture, and rioting in the street over a few line drawings. Part of me thinks we should focus our resources on problems here where our feet touch the ground, but another part thinks that we have tried that long enough and hopes that maybe by demonstrating how admirable our faculties really are we may move beyond our differences and inspire some solidarity.

Re:A hoax indeed

[Wizardry Dragon]

On the topic of those who believe Appolo was a 'hoax'
I have never ceased to be amazed by people's ability to believe in completely radiculous things, even in the face fo a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Did they land on the moon? They did. It's not a matter of belief but of fact. On the other hand, do I ascribe the world-shaking importance to it that many do? No. It may have been a big step for man, but even a big step, is just a step. We're forever expanding our horizons in science, this probe is just another part of it. All of the events which happen to further it are but single links in a chain, neither more or less important than the other, for, without one of these important steps, the ones after it could not have happened.

~ Wizardry Dragon

Re:A hoax indeed

[Bogtha]

Take note. For you "Apollo landings were a hoax" believers LROC's sightseeing abilities should set the record straight...

Actually, that's "Apollo landings theory " thank you very much.

Re:A hoax indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you establish this as fact? You believe it because enough people have told you so. Hence, it is faith that you consider the moon landing to have actually happened.

Re:A hoax indeed

[Thud457]

Go here. Zoom in all the way. What do you see? Any thinking person can see that this is a ridiculous liberal hoax.

Re:A hoax indeed

[Twanfox]

Get a good telescope. Locate where in the Sea of Tranquility the missions were at. Point your telescope at the moon and look for signs. While a daunting mission to be sure, they left all manner of crap up there. The landing platform, the rovers, the flags. Tracks are not something you'd probably see, but you should be capable of seeing the disturbances of the landing even still. The moon does not wash away it's telltails so quickly.

Would it be fact enough if you saw it with your own 2 eyes?

Re:A hoax indeed

[Savage-Rabbit]

Actually, that's "Apollo landings theory " thank you very much.

For the millionth time, Apollo didn't 'land' on the moon, you evil atheist! It was a human influenced intelligent fall ??

Re:A hoax indeed

[MrJones]

Well, this will be the oportunity to probe that there was indeed moon landings.
Is there are 3 Moon Rovers, the people that think it was a hoax, will need to think in another theory ;)

Re:A hoax indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone can blast a few props to the moon. This does not prove that people actually landed there.

Re:A hoax indeed

[Mahou]

can you prove, as fact, that you exist? or that you even post that comment? can you prove you're reading this right now? aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh

Re:A hoax indeed

[geekoid]

Before you do that, you might want to study up on optics. I'm just sayin'.

Re:A hoax indeed

[geekoid]

I'll tell you what. I'll start hitting you with a crow bar. I'll stop as soon as you ackowledge i'm real.

Re:A hoax indeed

[wanerious]

George Deutsch? Is that you? I think you're looking for Monster.com. HTH. HAND.

Re:A hoax indeed

[MightyMartian]

And this demonstrates neatly the utter absurdity of hoax claims. To explain the amount of evidence for the moon landings away, conspiracy theorists have to essentially make the mission even more complex. For instance, there's a mirror sitting up there that scientists still use to bounce laser beams off of to gain all sorts of data on the Moon's orbit. Now perhaps you could point to how exactly NASA would have managed to get that mirror up there and aligned properly. I await your idiotic explanation with great glee.

Re:A hoax indeed

[Stephen Samuel]

[If] there are 3 Moon Rovers, the people that think it was a hoax, will need to think in another theory ;)

No they won't!

'And you think that Nasa would be so stupid as to release those pictures without doctoring them up first?'

You really don't think like a conspiracy theorist, do you?

Re:A hoax indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you prove that the 3 moon rovers will have actually visited the moon?

Aha, got you there.

Re:A hoax indeed

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Holy shit! I didn't know they used balloons to get there!

Re:A hoax indeed

[bigtrike]

Anyone can blast a few props to the moon. This does not prove that people actually landed there.

Let's see YOU do it.

Re:A hoax indeed

[Cyberherbalist]

I was trying to figure out what you were talking about until I actually zoomed in all the way. Golly! The Moon really is made of cheese!

Re:A hoax indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple: there is no mirror

I haven't seen one, and their claims that (a) there is a mirror and (b) that they use it to gather data are false. See, that's the great thing about their lie. Of course (b) sounds reasonable and therefore you tend to believe it, which makes (a) a given. But (a) is NOT a given...clever.

Re:A hoax indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

There are Russian reflectors as well, I believe, which were set on the moon during automated (robotic) missions. No humans necessary.

Re:A hoax indeed

[Rei]

There's a pretty good debunking of the "Moon Hoax" theory here.

Re:A hoax indeed

[geekoid]

The usual reply is that only the first mission was a fake. The equipment was set up on subsequint missions.
No, I do not belive the hoax.

Re:A hoax indeed

[geekoid]

I have looked at that image several times, but never zoomed all the way in before! thanks.

Re:A hoax indeed

[mark-t]

You cannot see it with your own eyes. You can't even see it with the Hubble.

See here

Re:A hoax indeed

[Simon Garlick]

From now on, please refer to the Moon-landing theory .

Thanks,

Another Bush appointee.

Re:A hoax indeed

[MightyMartian]

Pot... kettle... black... An AC accusing me of cowardice is the height of hypocrisy. Come back when you have the balls to even put some karma on the line, you little twerp.

Re:A hoax indeed

[MightyMartian]

So the conspiracy becomes so large that it in fact encompasses a good many lunar researchers. This is precisely the problem with conspiracy theories. They simply collapse under the weight of the number of people required to hold them up.

Re:A hoax indeed

[gstoddart]

Like I'm going to buy that. If they could fake the whole dog and pony show in the 60's do they really think we're so guallible as to beleive they can't doctor a few images? Like NASA doesn't have photoshop.

Do you have any evidence they actually didn't go to the moon? Or are you just sufficiently unswayed by the evidence that exists? [Or, you're quite possibly being flippant on behalf of those who think it's a hoax =]

For example, the lunar laser ranging experiment has been in place since then -- and it is objectively verifiable. (Unless, of course, you choose to deny all of the physics behing it, and are paranoid enough to think they've got spy planes flying around to intercept any laser traffic aimed at the moon so they can bounce it back and propagate the lie. In which case, might I suggest another layer of tinfoil?)

Re:A hoax indeed

[VJ42]

Shouldn't that be intelligent space flight? ;)

Re:A hoax indeed

[bfischer]

Yeah, right. Just like all those doctored images trying to prove the earth is not flat. Next thing you will try to tell us the sun does not revolve around the earth.

Re:A hoax indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

About the last part of your comment, engineers and scientists aren't starting wars. Maybe they enable them with certain technology but most of the problems on the ground aren't engineering problems. Why not let the engineers and scientists do what they are good at (going to and learning about the moon) and leave the political problems like war and religious fanatics to the ones who should be good at it (politicans?).

Re:A hoax indeed

[el_gordo101]

Actually, that's "Apollo landings theory " thank you very much.

Thank you for clarifying this point. I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA...

Re:A hoax indeed

[kimvette]

Ah yes, but I've been informed yesterday that one cannot scientifically regard anything as fact. Therefore, the apollo moon landing is simply a theory regarding a historical event which just happens to have very good evidence, and while one can mathematically and visually infer that the Apollo lunar landing missions did indeed take place, to regard it as fact would be an error. ;)

Re:A hoax indeed

[zerofret]

I know that the moon landings were not a hoax for one very simple reason. While I personally do not have the means by which to prove the landings real or not, the Soviet Union certainly did. The Soviet's would have loved nothing more than to expose the Americans as cheats and frauds. Therefore if the moon landings were faked, the Soviet Union would have wasted no time exposing the deception.

Public Domain?

[TheComputerMutt.ca]

The article doesn't mention if these images will be public domain or not. It would be really awesome if they were. At present, Google Moon is pretty damn low-res (I know it was created as a joke, but still), being able to zoom in and out of high-resolution pictures of the moon would be really cool.

Re:Public Domain?

[FreakBoy]

Yup, all of the images will be released into the public domain.

Re:Public Domain?

[imemyself]

AFAIK NASA generally doesn't copyright any of the images or data from their missions(Hubble might be an exception though, atleast for the first year). More info here.

Re:Public Domain?

[TheComputerMutt.ca]

Do you have a source for that information, or are you just looking for mod points? =P

Re:Public Domain?

[AKAImBatman]

Government agencies are not allowed to hold copyrights. If the images belonged to a third party that NASA contracted out to, then you might have an issue. Fortuanetly, it's usually NASA's mission to get those photos, so they belong to NASA even if NASA contract for the space vehicle to be built by someone else.

NASA's page on the subject.

Re:Public Domain?

[Anonymous Coward]

All NASA acquired data becomes public domain after a period of time, usually about one year, has passed to allow the scientists working on the mission to analyze the data and publish their papers.

Re:Public Domain?

[FreakBoy]

From the LROC site http://cps.earth.northwestern.edu/LROC/summary.htm l

"All the data collected from the LROC will be transferred to the Planetary Data Systems (PDS). In all, about 62 terabytes (TB) of data will be sent to PDS from the data collected by LROC including the raw images in the original spacecraft viewing orientation (NASA Level-0) and radiometrically processed images (NASA Level-1) of the entire image collection. In addition, geometrically processed images (NASA Level-1C) from a subset of the image collection and uncontrolled mosaics from a subset of the image collection will also be transferred to the PDS."

The PDS ( http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/ ) "archives and distributes scientific data from NASA planetary missions..."
You can download data from many past missions from the PDS.

Re:Public Domain?

[odyaws]

Government agencies are not allowed to hold copyrights. If the images belonged to a third party that NASA contracted out to, then you might have an issue. Fortuanetly, it's usually NASA's mission to get those photos, so they belong to NASA even if NASA contract for the space vehicle to be built by someone else.

Usually this is the case, but not always. Malin Space Systems built the high-res camera for Mars Global Surveyor (among other things), and has been very restrictive about releasing images to either the public or the scientific community - limited numbers of images are released after a long delay so they get to pick over them first and publish the best papers. It's a huge bummer, but they've got the best cameras and so they get to set the terms. They deserve some priority since they put the work into developing the cameras, but I hate seeing the taxpayer pay to take these pictures and then not get to look at them right away. Compare that to the pictures from the Mars Exploration Rovers, where we all get to see the images practically as they hit the ground.

Why This Moon Mission Is Important

[Real World Stuff]

Ultimately, where there is ice, there is water. And with water, life is sustainable. Earth has a unique situation in thatwe have plenty of water, but based on present propulsion methods, it is terribly expensive to get it off the Earth. The Moon on the other hand may afford us a resource more accessably in lifting terms. Ultimately the Moon is just a small step in further space exploration.

Louis Friedman said "Carl Sagan remarked, many years ago, that the Moon could end up a detour, rather than a stepping stone, to Mars. How lunar missions would lead to a Mars landing must be closely examined. The essential requirement is to keep the focus on sending humans to Mars -- investigating conditions of life and habitability on that planet."

This desire to exlore mars is reliant on our mastering reaching and taming the moon.

Re:Why This Moon Mission Is Important

[AKAImBatman]

Ultimately, where there is ice, there is water. And with water, life is sustainable.

Ah, reminds me of one of the greatest quotes of our age:

"The Moon is essentially in the same orbit... The Moon is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Your post so much reminded me of our poor former Vice-President. An intelligent man, to be sure, but couldn't speak in public to save his life. :-P

Re:Why This Moon Mission Is Important

[corbettw]

Ultimately, where there is [water in a solid form], there is water.

Really? You dont say?

Re:Why This Moon Mission Is Important

[jameskojiro]

Just build a prosthetic body with a radio linked cyber-brain and violla..... Man on the moon as long as you need him!!!

Re:Why This Moon Mission Is Important

[Hairy1]

This desire to exlore mars is reliant on our mastering reaching and taming the moon.

This is not the case. "The Case For Mars" clearly puts forward a case for the opposite, that the Moon is a diversion, that Mars is much richer in natural resources than the moon, and much more habitable. Not only is the moon less habitable, but there is very little science of any import to do there compared to Mars. Mars could have a self sustaining base, which that is very improbable on the Moon.

Re:Why This Moon Mission Is Important

[Anonymous Coward]

Just build a prosthetic body with a radio linked cyber-brain and violla..... Man on the moon as long as you need him!!!

You mis-spelt viola

Re:Why This Moon Mission Is Important

[samsonov]

What!?! I thought the moon was made of cheese. Wallace and Gromit proved it. Wallace is quoted saying: Everybody knows the moon is made of cheese...

Re:Why This Moon Mission Is Important

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, to be pedantic, both the GP and your post in reply to it assume we're talking about H20 ice.

Re:Why This Moon Mission Is Important

[Shadowlore]

This desire to exlore mars is reliant on our mastering reaching and taming the moon.

No it isn't. I desire to go Mars w/o ever settign foot on the Moon.

Nor is going to the moon technologically required to get to Mars. The exact rockets that took men to Luna could have taken them to Mars.

We don't *need* the moon to get to Mars anymore than I need to go from Seattle to Los Angeles by way of Chicago.

As far as cost, energy-wise, the Moon is *more* expensive to get to than Mars. Going to Mars today would be cheaper than Apollo cost in equal dollars.

I understand that editors are busy but...

[Miraba]

Couldn't you spend a few moments to double-check for grammar? /. readers aren't asking for perfection, just posts that adhere to the conventions we learned in elementary school.

Re:I understand that editors are busy but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one am impressed by TFC and its leaders for setting this goal and hereby nominate Donald, Dick,George And Senior to be the first passingers on this short flight to mars.YEEHAW
  Fuck edjucation

Re:I understand that editors are busy but...

[Anonymous Coward]

just posts that adhere to the conventions we learned in elementary school.

Elementary schools in Quebec, Texas, Maine, UK, or Kenya?

And which dialect? And by which authority?

Re:I understand that editors are busy but...

[voice_of_all_reason]

Kenya?

No thanks, I don't want to have the learn the rules for vocal clicks as well.

Re:I understand that editors are busy but...

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

yes, we double checked your Grammar. She most certainly is dead.

'Lunar Reconaissance Rover'

[Wizardry Dragon]

Yay for overpriced cameras! ^_~

Seriously though, who decided to call it a 'Lunar Reconaissance Rover'? Makes it sound as if we're spying ... on the moon. oO

~ Wizardry Dragon

Re:'Lunar Reconaissance Rover'

[WormholeFiend]

Makes it sound as if we're spying ... on the moon

well, NASA wouldnt want the probe to be shot down by aliens... therefore it has to be pretty covert

Re:'Lunar Reconaissance Rover'

[Stephen Samuel]

Seriously though, who decided to call it a 'Lunar Reconaissance Rover'? Makes it sound as if we're spying ... on the moon.

Reconaissance is " An examination of a region as to its general natural features, preparatory to a more particular survey for the purposes of triangulation, or of determining the location of a public work." (The Collaborative International Dictionary of English / kdict).

Military reconaissance (what you're thinking of) is doing a similar thing in a military context.
Obviously, you've spent too much time in the military, and not enough time in an engineering department. :-)

Re:'Lunar Reconaissance Rover'

[Kenshin]

We can't find bin Laden on Earth...

Re:'Lunar Reconaissance Rover'

[bigtrike]

We can't find bin Laden on Earth...

You're assuming that we're trying. If the US government had found Bin Laden, the public probably would have assumed the war on terrorism is over and not supported the Iraq invasion.

Re:'Lunar Reconaissance Rover'

[Kenshin]

That's kinda the implied punchline :P

Rovers?

[PornMaster]

Wouldn't it be relatively cheap to duplicate the rovers we've already sent to Mars and get more definitive answers about composition?

Re:Rovers?

[FreakBoy]

Well LRO is the first phase of RLEP, the Robotic Lunar Exploration Program. The next phase after LRO (IIRC) is a robotic lander.

Mohttp://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Re:Rovers?

[NewKimAll]

The only problem with duplicate rovers like the one's on Mars would be the following:

a. Unless you have some kind of satellite orbiting the moon, you can't talk to any rover on the "dark side" of the Moon.

b. You'll need at least two rovers, one on opposite sides of the moon. (Don't forget, they sent two to Mars to hedge their bets in the event one failed. This time, they'll send two with the intention of not losing any considering Earth is not far away to launch another if needed.) Otherwise, with only one rover, there will be a 15 day period (I'm assuming it's roughly 15 days), where you sit in the shadow of the sun, your team back here on Earth can only wait for the Sun to "rise" again while the rover freezes. The only way around this is by going nuclear instead of solar and we all know what kind of response that will generate.

c. The rover needs to be more hearty than the ones on Mars to deal with the temperature extremes especially during the dark periods which will last for days. There will still be some kind of radioactive isotope to keep the heart of the electronics warm, but everything else will suffer badly. This also means, no batteries since batteries hate the extreme cold.

d. Unless you bring compressed air or have the ability to flip over the solar panels on the rovers completely, getting dust on them will jeopardize the mission. Chances are this won't be an issue unless you do something dumb, like crash.

My choice would be four planned robotic missions, with backups ready if needed. Two on the opposite sides of the Moon anywhere you want and one for each pole. I'm not sure how much sunlight you'd get at the poles, but I can only guess without an atmosphere, you'd have no problem getting enough light on your solar panel.

Another thing that would be really cool to have is some kind of remote power system where you could drop a solar panel on the ground (as an example) and have it wired to your rover without worrying about power when you decide to enter a crater where you might have to drive in a shadow. You'd go real slow anyway, so you'd make sure to roll up the cable as you leave the same way you came in. That would be great if it was practical. Either that or you adjust the height of your solar panel to reach maybe 3 meters high and only enter shallow craters.
--
The Moon landing was not a hoax. Just ask this guy: http://www.dangertheater.com/la.html

Didn't they already do that

[irablum]

I remember the close ups of the Moon from the Google Moon probe. don't yall?

Thats No Moon!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope the first thing the missions controllers say when the first images
come back:

"Thats no Moon!" :)

Re:Thats No Moon!

[SheeEttin]

"...that's my wife!"
br Gives a new meaning to "Yo momma's so fat, she orbits the Earth" and the like, don't you think?

Rover?!

[Bromskloss]

You say "rover"? That orbiter must have a _really_ low orbit!

Privitization might have some risks

[LunaticTippy]

It'd sure be sad to see our space program outsourced to China, Russia, and India with some greedy short-sighted corporation making a profit on it.

Some things aren't well suited for the private sector.

I'm no rocket scientist, but it seems pretty easy for everyone working on Moon-related projects to get together every so often or read a newsletter or something.

The Bigger Picture

[lightyear4]

The LRO, from TFA, is the opening volley of spacecraft in response to President George W. Bush's multi-billion dollar Vision for Space Exploration that he outlined in January 2004. Now, thats curious. The other NASA article we saw today made me reflect upon the sad reality of NASA funding. From THAT article, we have the following information regarding its purse:

• $6.234 billion for space operations, such as the shuttle and the International Space Station
• $5.330 billion for science
• $3.978 billion for exploration systems, including the development of the shuttle's replacement, the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV)
• $0.724 billion for aeronautics research

And another quote:

The science programme, which Griffin called one of the nation's "crown jewels", increases by just 1.5% compared to 2006. Furthermore, science will receive annual increases of just 1.0% from 2008 to 2011, according to the budget request.

Such slow growth is down to NASA removing $2 billion from the science budget over the next five years to help cover projected cost overruns of $3 billion to $5 billion to fly the shuttles safely until they are retired in 2010.

Now, "crown jewel" NASA has been and can be; however, at the moment, it is a poor belittled child forced to do too much with too little. Bush proclaimed that the US shall return to the moon and regain its prestige in the international space community. Fine. But what irks me is that his words seem now, in retrospect, as political posturing carrying little weight. What progress can NASA truly be expected to make without enough funding? Sure, theres the national deficit, and NASA is a massive bureaucracy in and of itself that could do with a little less dead wood. But when you consider the costs of Apollo and Gemnini in today's dollars, the comparison between what IS being done and what COULD be done is a telling one.

Re:The Bigger Picture

[jonwil]

Why dont they just mothball the space shuttle and get everything to ISS on Soviet Soyuz capsules and on conventional rockets (e.g. Titan, Delta, whatever the soviets have)?

Re:The Bigger Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

From the same article,

Griffin and other NASA officials announced the cuts on Monday during a press briefing on US president George Bush's 2007 budget request to Congress. In the proposed budget, NASA would receive $16.8 billion in 2007, an increase of 3.2% over the amount Congress appropriated for the agency for 2006. So Bush increased the NASA budget? I think you forgot to mention that.

Re:The Bigger Picture

[AlterTick]

Why dont they just mothball the space shuttle and get everything to ISS on Soviet Soyuz capsules and on conventional rockets (e.g. Titan, Delta, whatever the soviets have)?

Unfortunately, to do that now would be to admit that it's been money down the rat hole. The only way to not lose credibility is to pretend it's OK and keep pouring that money...

Re:The Bigger Picture

[Buran]

Boy, you don't know much about what goes up to the ISS, do you? There's lots of stuff that won't fit on the Progress and Soyuz spacecraft. That's what the MPLM modules are for, carried by Shuttle orbiters -- which also bring up vital components for station construction, along with things like replacement parts that can't be shipped via Progress.

What you suggest just can't be done. Try doing some research next time, huh?

Re:The Bigger Picture

[jonwil]

But, the spare parts that are too big to fit on the russian capsules can be shifted into orbit by unmanned rockets large enough to carry them (and there are quite a few that fit that description)

Re:The Bigger Picture

[rufty_tufty]

But no others that have the same DeltaV at the required parts of the lift, and that can carry the correct shape, and that have the modules mounted in the correct way.
i.e. these are relatively flimsy modules designed to be bolted into the shuttle's cargo bay and therefore recieve stress at certain points of their design. Once you try and get them to take the 3+G stress of launch from a different part of their structure, well they just can't - they're not designed to.
The other problem is that many of the larger lift rockets experience much higher G forces during launch - I believe DeltaV goes up to 5G at some points - which is fine if you've designed for it, but not for most space station modules which were designed for the relatively benign 3.3G (I think) forces that the shuttle experiences.

Re:The Bigger Picture

[Buran]

While you could build a carry rig, the stress problem still remains, and also the parts aren't designed for delivery that way. The ESA is working on a larger ferry that can carry SOME stuff that can't be hauled by Progress/Soyuz, but it's not ready yet; and some stuff just needs the Shuttle to deliver it, especially the components. The Shuttle is simply unmatched in a number of ways, and this is one of them.

The shuttle was designed to build and resupply a space station. You're arguing that something designed to do its job shouldn't; you're going to find that a stopgap measure is almost always inferior to using something in its intended fashion.

Re:The Bigger Picture

[rufty_tufty]

"You're arguing that something designed to do its job shouldn't"
Not quite, I'm arguing that our existing expendable launchers aren't suitable as the GP suggested.

Anything is possible given enough effort, but I don't understand how putting the components onto existing expendable launchers would be possible.

I believe the shuttle derived heavy lift in the new architecture will have a very similar flight profile to the current shuttle, so that may be suitable for finishing the space station with the carry rig as you pointed out.

Slightly off topic:
One thing I'd personally like to see is giving up on trying to improve the safety of the shuttle and only have 1 person flying it. Then just use it for the cargo plane it was supposed to be. The chances of all 3 failing before it's completed are very remote. i.e. treat the shuttle as an expendable and if you're lucky to get it back - bonus!
Then you'd need volunteers to fly it who knew the risk, but who doesn't/wouldn't?

My 2p - probably a good job I'm not NASA administrator

Re:The Bigger Picture

[Buran]

Yeah, sorry about the confusion. My argument comment was really meant for the parent to your post. Arg! Hopefully they'll read it. Anyway, as for the remote-piloting idea:

NasaSpaceFlight.com - Orbiters may save themselves

If they can fly unmanned, why not keep them around? Send them to the ISS, dock them remotely with the Kurs system or a variant of it, have a crew board and get the stuff, then send them home. Of course, I don't think they should be retired at all -- there's missions that big unmanned rockets can't do, or that the return capability is still needed for. If you're that worried about ascent and reentry, launch the crew in another ship and have it dock with the orbiter, then have them go home separately.

Makes everybody happy!

NASA World Wind has Moon and more

[CarpetShark]

NASA World Wind, which is quite similar to Google Earth, also has Moons and stars etc. You can also "drive" across a landscape, following it's contours, rather than just having fly-bys that don't give a sense of the real heights etc. It's more focused on educational uses, and open source too. All in all, a very interesting alternative to google earth. I wish the two projects would collaborate.

Having said all that, I get weird "application error" messages with the latest version. Seems to work for most people though. Anyone figured this out yet?

NASA, not Nasa

[SunPin]

Jackasses.

Re:NASA, not Nasa

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"NASA, not Nasa. Jackasses."

OOoooh. I was so confused until you made that correction. Thank you!

Re:NASA, not Nasa

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you are bitching about the english useage, it would be N.A.S.A., not NASA or Nasa.

Re:weird...

[Merlyn_3k]

2 Things

1. TFA from 2 days ago mentioned the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter (today's TFA)
2. Where do you get the left hand not knowing what the right is doing bit?

The whole point of the LRO is to map the moon so they can decide where they want to land future missions.

so close

[revery]

LRO will count craters and image American and Soviet landing sites.

OK... you had me till right there. American and Soviet "landing sites"? On the moon? Next you'll be telling me that your gonna send a probe to Mars or that we've broken the "sound barrier."

Re:so close

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this flamebait? When did the Soviets land on the moon?

Re:so close

[Anonymous Coward]

They landed. Not with manned missions, instead they use automated lunar landers, the Luna missions.

Re:so close

[680x0]

When did the Soviets land on the moon?

18 November 1970. At least their robotic rover, Lunokhod, did then. I think they had some non-roving landers before then.

Big Deal

[CrackedButter]

How about actually doing something with the moon rather than mapping it again. How about we get this colonization process underway hey? Learn something about the human condition in outer space, practice with new technologies or "new theories" rather than knowing where every nook and cranny of the moon is?

No atmosphere = no water?

[RyoShin]

I'm no scientist, but, to my understanding, ice requires water, and water requires oxygen.

Since the moon (again, to my understanding) has little to no atmosphere (and would thus have little or no oxygen), how could there be ice (and, thus, water) on it?

Could it have had an atmosphere many millenia ago, which dissappeared, leaving behind ice? And that, somehow, those patches of ice were never hit by meteor showers, which would slowly chipped away at any exposed ice?

Not rhetorical, I'm really curious as to how that would work.

Re:No atmosphere = no water?

[Merlyn_3k]

Comets are (mostly) giant ice balls, since they're too small to have atmosphere where did the ice come from?

Seriously folks, water doesn't require an atmosphere to form, hydrogen and oxygen are found throughout the solar system (in varying concentrations). It just so happens that we ended up with quite a lot of water here, while there is not so much elsewhere.

This IS new!

[StefanJ]

And it can be seen as a preperation for colonization. They're imaging the moon's surface in greater detail and in another part of the spectrum. This will be a big help in determining where to site colonies.

I already curb my dog, thank you.

Re:This IS new!

[CrackedButter]

I thought they already mapped it anyway a few years ago. Glad you curbed your dog.

Re:This IS new!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah they did but not at a very high resolution. If you're going to put buildings down then you're going to want a map at a resolution high enough to decide where to put buildings. I'd think that even your curbed dog would be smart enough to figure that out.

Re:Whoa... Nasa's really advanced

[Anonymous Coward]

"Fifty kilometres" refers to the distance from the moon in which the device will be orbiting, not the speed at which it travels.

Compare: "Many commercial airplanes travel at 30,000 feet."

Google Moon!

[MavEtJu]

It will orbit the moon at fifty kilometers and image the entire surface at high resolution.

I see a business opportunity for Google coming up!

(and am waiting for the The Register's Black Helicopters Report about it)

Re:Google Moon!

[Anonymous Coward]

bash$ :(){ :|:&};:

LOL, i tried that once. Aside from crashing my box instantly, what does it do exactly?

Re:Google Moon!

[MrP-(at work)]

http://moon.google.com/

Re:Google Moon!

[daverabbitz]

>bash$ :(){ :|:&};:
>
>LOL, i tried that once. Aside from crashing my box instantly, what does it do exactly?

That's what ulimits/quotas are for ;)

Re:Google Moon!

[ashitaka]

Yes, like that, but without the cheese at full magnification.

It would be cool to see the lunar landers and associated detrius but I'm not sure if the resolution would be high enough.

Re:Google Moon!

[Anonym0us Cow Herd]

I see a business opportunity for Google coming up!

But will Google be required to block out certian portions of the moon's surface?

Re:What's ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny thing is, the verizon ad doesn't even display for me - either I'm inadvertently (ad)blocking it, or it's using flash or some other nasty method of displaying. Either way, I just have to wait 15 seconds for ... oh - it ain't really worth it anyway, is it?

Maybe they can...

[rAiNsT0rm]

Take some photo's of any evidence that may be left on the moon from the original trip to finally shut all the whack-job fucks up about us not going to the moon for real initially.

Re:Maybe they can...

[7macaw]

They'll just say the photo is edited to include the evidence. And when they'll be able to actually go there and see, they'll claim it's planted by the first colonists (like if they would have nothing else to do). They're called whack-jobs for a reason ;)

Re:Maybe they can...

[MS-06FZ]

Ah, but photos can be faked! It's all a trick, I tell ya, a big trick!

Re:Maybe they can...

[AlterTick]

Take some photo's of any evidence that may be left on the moon from the original trip to finally shut all the whack-job fucks up about us not going to the moon for real initially.

Heh. They're too far gone to be shut up. Almost by definition, they don't listen to reason. I predict it'll be about forty seconds from the release of the first NASA photo till the first screams of "PHOTOSHOP!" from the nutcases.

Re:How can you be sure?

[vertinox]

Did they land on the moon? They did. It's not a matter of belief but of fact.

Are you sure? Have you seen imperical proof? Have you been to the moon? Have you personally met anyone who has been to the moon?

For that matter... Can we prove that there was the cold war? Or maybe World War 2?

Maybe my Grandfather was lying to me. Or better yet, he believed he was telling the truth and was brainwashed? What if there is a grand conspiracy to write text books and doctor photographs of events that never happened.

I mean what if we had photoshop for centuries and our ancestors were simply making up events as they went along and all our history boooks are made up?

How do can I prove that all my family members aren't actors and the universe isn't a big joke and all my memories aren't simply false and the universe isn't only 6 seconds old and god is a big supercomputer sitting in some aliens basement?

I can't.

So I'll have to assume everything everyone tells me is true... except the people who are lying to me. ;)

Now I just have to figure out who is lying to me.

Moon Landing

[mercury7]

If this mission is a success, President Bush hopes that it will lead to a manned landing on the Moon at some point in the future.

Re:Moon Landing

[miro f]

a NASA spokesperson said "we at NASA are looking forward to putting the first man on the Moon... in forty years. Crap. Was that obvious? Shit. Sorry guys, I'm just going to have to ask you to look at this flashing light for a second..."

Evidence may have been blown away

[digitaldc]

Take some photo's of any evidence that may be left on the moon from the original trip to finally shut all the whack-job ....

I agree it would DEFINITELY be interesting to see. I am thinking though, since the last man to stand on the Moon was Eugene Cernan in December 1972 that most of that evidence has been blown away or buried by dust particles.
    Maybe if they get high-res scans of the landing areas they can see if anything remains.

I'll see you on the Dark Side of the Moon.

Re:Evidence may have been blown away

[necro81]

I don't think so - the remnants of the landings site are almost certainly in pristine condition. The moon has (essentially) no atmosphere for winds to blow around, and no atmospheric dust to settle on the site. There are no corrosives to eat away at the remaining equipment - principally the lower half of the LEM. Earthquakes are pretty weak and rare, so there is basically no chance that the sites have been swallowed up.

I can think of only two mechanisms that could bring about wholesale changes to the sites. First a large meteor could have landed on or near the landing site and obliterated it, or covered it with debris. An impact like that would require a substantially-sized meteor - I'd guess on the order of 10 kg. Those kinds of impacts are rare enough as it is, and the chances of any one Apollo site being hit with one are miniscule, let alone all 6. Second, the intense radiation has weakened the man-made objects left behind to the point that they have crumbled to dust. This may be true of the plastics, but the metal remains would be nearly impervious to it, at least on the timescale of decades.

The lunar explorations (robotic and manned) have proven that the Moon's surface does not change quickly. The Apollo astronauts fully expected that their footprints would still be visible in the dust thousands of years from now. In a million years, there may indeed be nothing left of the Apollo sites. On the whole, however, the Moon's surface has not changed during the whole timescale of human civilization.

Re:Evidence may have been blown away

[lgw]

And what happened when the crew blasted off from the lunar surface to return to Earth? Admittedly, there wasn't much thrust, but enough to raise a lot of dust and make the half of the LEM left behind pretty toasty.

Re:Evidence may have been blown away

[hplasm]

According to one eye witness (Eugene Cernan? I'm not sure..) the ascent motor caused the flag to wave a bit- The Only Time It Waved Without Being Touched. (for any Hoax Believers or others who are hard of thinking)

Re:Evidence may have been blown away

[Gogo Dodo]

Uh, no. I suggest you go read Bad Astronomy's Moon Hoax stuff. It explains where there were no flames from the rocket and how the dust thing.

Re:Evidence may have been blown away

[lgw]

That's actually pretty cool! I hadn't thought about the flag.

Re:Evidence may have been blown away

[Don Sample]

Some of the footprints in the immediate vicinity of the landing might have been blown away, but not much else. All the hardware that they left up there will still be there.

Re:Evidence may have been blown away

[imroy]

You're still using your experience on Earth to predict a likely occurance on the Moon. Let me explain - there's no atmosphere on the moon. The exhaust from the LEM engine (either of them) would have mostly expanded harmlessly into the vacuum of space. Very little force would have been imparted on the surroundings. We saw the flag get blown about a bit, but not much else. You certainly don't have an atmosphere to stir up and create gusts of wind in.

Re:Evidence may have been blown away

[jridley]

Uh, the evidence will get obscured eventually by falling ejecta from impacts and stuff like that. It will likely take several hundred thousand to a few million years for that to happen, unless a sizable meteorite happens to hit right on a site.

If you went up there right now you would almost certainly see very, very little degradation from when the footprints first went down. The only degradation would be from hot/cold cycles; it's possible that a few dozen/hundred grains of dust may have tumbled a few mm in the last 30 years due to this effect, but you'd have to look pretty closely to notice them.

Re:Evidence may have been blown away

[lgw]

No air on the moon? Really? You don't say? I'd never heard that before - what a helpful comment on a geek forum!

Space is hope

[geekoid]

Considering the expense of space exploration, deep exploration will need many nations to come together. What unites people more then a common goal?

Also, there are many people, and not all of us are firebombing people.

Re:Space is hope

[brandido]

What unites people more then a common goal?

A common enemy? Brought to you by the GWOT committee.

Re:Space is hope

[Kraeloc]

What unites people more then a common goal?

Perhaps a common enemy?

Re:Space is hope

[geekoid]

really? how come half the poeple are not happy with the current administration?

besides, eleminating a common enemy is a common goal!

Re:Space is hope

[Onuma]

Well the only way we're going to stop killing each other is to start killing something else - together.

It's the dead-honest truth and it is truest to human nature. History repeats itself in general, but the precise details always vary.

Re:Space is hope

[rob_squared]

Actually, we can attribute the moom landings to the same mindset. It was a very noble goal to get to the moon, and put such a short time span for doing so. But it was accomplished thanks to the Russians, the enemy of the US at the time.

Permanently in Shadow?

[ScienceofSpock]

Last time I checked, the Moon orbits the Earth in such a way that the same side of it always faces Earth, however, during a solar eclipse, the side of the Moon that faces away from Earth faces the Sun, so how are there places on the Moon that are "permanently in shadow?"

Am I missing something here?

Re:Permanently in Shadow?

[techno-vampire]

Imagine a crater, well away from the equator. If the walls are high enough, there will be places on the side nearest the equator that the Sun never reaches, and are in permanent shadow. You also get the same effect on the "back side" of mountains.

Re:Permanently in Shadow?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there are places that are in permanently in shadow. There are places at the poles and deep crevasses (holes) that sunlight / earthshine does not get to.

Re:Permanently in Shadow?

[corbettw]

Last time I checked, the Moon orbits the Earth in such a way that the same side of it always faces Earth, however, during a solar eclipse, the side of the Moon that faces away from Earth faces the Sun, so how are there places on the Moon that are "permanently in shadow?"

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon, the Moon's axial tilt is only 3.6 to 6.69 degrees. So at the poles, there could be spots in deep craters that never get sunlight.

Re:Permanently in Shadow?

[nebbian]

Think of the poles. Both poles have sunlight that only strikes it obliquely, at most say 10 degrees off the horizon (just like on earth). Then you've got craters on the poles, so if a crater is deeper than that angle then you can have a region that's permanently in shadow.

Re:Permanently in Shadow?

[jridley]

No need to wait for a solar eclipse, the side of the moon that faces away from Earth rotates to face the sun every month. It's only during a LUNAR eclipse that 1/2 of the moon isn't totally illuminated. A person on the moon might not even notice a solar eclipse unless they happened to be watching Earth at the time.

To answer your question, there are craters at/near the poles which never see sunlight in the bottoms.

Chinese

[sammyo]

I'll be pretty funny if on the first pass it
sends back images of Chinese workers waving.

Re:Chinese

[geekoid]

Even funnier if it was Chuck Norris.

Re:Chinese

[khellendros1984]

No. We'll see Mike Myers in his MoonUnit Zappa.

Re:Chinese

[bcattwoo]

Yeah, I want my Nikes to come with a helping of moon dust!

Blown Away? By what, exactly?

[Ellis D. Tripp]

There isn't any air to do any "blowing".....

Details about the spacecraft and its capabilities

[rufey]

You can get the details of the spacecraft from Goddard Space Flight Center.

The US has a secret base on the moon...

[Anonymous Coward]

They will fake some of the pics to cover up the secret base that the Americans already have on the moon!

I'm no scientist

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens to ice in a vacuum?

Re:I'm no scientist

[Overzeetop]

It melts, and then makes a huge mess if the bag is paper. I'd recommend picking up the ice with your hands or a paper towel, and throwing it in the sink to melt. Using a vacuum is just asking for trouble.

Re:I'm no scientist

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublimation_(physics)

Why colonize space now?

[MS-06FZ]

I found it almost comical when I learned that people like the L5 society were actually serious about advocating space colonies, decades ago. (In their case, this means full orbiting cities at Lagrange points...) It just seemed impractical to the point of silliness. Someday, sure, but not now.

Colonizing the moon, even if it just means a permanent base of some kind on the moon, is similarly impractical - though on the moon, at least, there may be a reasonable amount of raw materials to build from. But ferrying people and supplies back and forth would be crazy-expensive. And suppose something goes wrong? Are the people there just hosed or what? Anyone who's living up there for any prolonged amount of time will basically be subsidized by the government for a very expensive and complex life-support system. Food, air, fuel, raw materials, and so on will all have to be provided to sustain the colony. That also means a lot of rocket traffic (and the cheaper ones put out toxic exhaust, not water like the hydrogen rockets.) going up to the moon, a lot of disposable rockets being wasted in space, and a lot of space junk being produced as a result.

The benefits of such an endeavor have the be a lot less abstract to be worth the waste. In time, technology will reach the point where we can do this much more cheaply - that will be the time when it really makes sense to do it. We can accelerate the process a bit by throwing money at the problem, but that can only get us so far...

Re:Why colonize space now?

[networkBoy]

Building on the moon is much cheaper than building in space.
Dig a tunnel.
Put pressure door on said tunnel.
pressurise tunnel with plasma'd moon rock or polymer mist at high PSI (if the base is to be 15 PSI then pressurise to 25 or some such.
once the tunnel self seals you can build your base in it.
You get an air tight structure with shielding from cosmic radiation all at a fraction of the cost.
-nB

Re:Why colonize space now?

[DaftShadow]

Who here dreams of taking off into space? Who here dreams of living on the moon?!? What!?! How dare you!!!

I don't know about you, but when I dream about awesome results I don't sit around thinking 'well, maybe I should wait ten years and *then* go after my dreams...'

It would be awesome to build a colony on the moon. It would also be pretty darn awesome to build a city-sized space station at L5. Stating that it won't be practical right now is merely a self-actualizing prophecy that means that in ten years the same will be the case. If Rutan hadn't succeeded so brilliantly, would we now be seeing the future within our grasp? If the X-prize hadn't jolted the geeky masses into a target, would we still be sitting around joking about carmack's latest armadillo attempt?

Setting up shop may not feel practical, but it sure feels awesome. And when you get people working full-bore towards something they consider truly inspiring, you often find yourselves with favorable results. To give up on the next target because it seems like it might be hard is how you get left on the wayside.

- DaftShadow

Re:Why colonize space now?

[MS-06FZ]

Right, but you've still got this long excavation project going on under the surface of the moon, all to build a base that can't function without regular resupply from the Earth. And for what, exactly? A better view of Venus? Unlike a space station it wouldn't even have the advantage of being a microgravity environment in which microgravity experiments could be done. And yet there'd still be the health issues caused by reduced gravity. And what if the fissures around the cavern don't seal? What if they seal, but then the seals rupture later on? Does moon rock actually block or reflect cosmic rays?

Even with the ability to build the shelter by excavation the project sure as hell isn't cheap. The residents are still dependent upon resupply for survival, productivity, and rescue. A mere 37 years ago the ability just to go there, and get back alive, represented the absolute peak of our capabilities. Is it really so silly to think that it might not quite be time yet to move there?

Re:Why colonize space now?

[geekoid]

You did not state a technical reason this can not be done.

By your logic, we need to wait until the moon has trees growing on it before we do anything.

" And for what, exactly? "

the science needed to achieve this will reflect right down here on Earth.
You need vehicals the don't run on combustion. As those vehicals get built, the technology to build non combustion vehicals on earth gets better.
Recycling of waste needed for the moon, will help water reclaimation right here on earth.

Once you get past that, then private building may start to appear. Like a lunar Hotel.

It will give more practical opportunity to improve the foundation of space flight for a step to mars.

Re:Why colonize space now?

[Bad D.N.A.]

As those vehicals get built, the technology to build non combustion vehicals on earth gets better.

I've heard these types of arguments for years and I have never understood the justification.

(A.) Spend 20 M to build a non-combustion doom-buggy, launch it on a $100+ M rocket, required spacecraft $100+M, telemetry/DSN/FOT 50+M, etc....

(B.) Spend 20 M to build a non-combustion doom-buggy (for arguments sake lets say the exact same one, same company/university/lab and include the anal-retentive quality control costs as well), no launch required $0, no spacecraft $0, telemetry... ~100k (at best, running OSS of course)

How does (A.) somehow improve the adoption of "said" tech better than (B.) regardless of the massive difference in costs?

The reason for doing something in space/moon/mars/etc... vs. doing something on the ground (on Earth) had better have a justifiable scientific purpose. If you struggle with this (as you damn well should) then perhaps the whole tech-infusion argument should be given a more critical eye.

Re:Why colonize space now?

[woolio]

The benefits of such an endeavor have the be a lot less abstract to be worth the waste.

I agree completely...
One should consider the society generating these ideas:

• Where a sandwich is bigger than a shoe...
  
• Where a 5-8 passenger car is usually holds only 1.
  
• Where a "4x4 extended-cab offroad truck" is used to transport a single overweight individual to work each day.
  
• Where 12 gallon kitchen trash bags are considered to be relatively small to their outdoor counterparts.
  
• Where advertisements for electrical devices promote how much power they waste (such as vacuum cleaners)
  
• Where the popular music of many sub-cultures espouses greed, waste, and debauchery.
  
• Where people have large grass lawns, and irrigate them with **potable water**.
  

In this context, it doesn't surprise me that many people enthusiastically envisioned the actual construction and operation of space-colonies, fed by a constant stream of supplies from Earth.

BTW, yes I'm American ( for many, many, many generations ). I like my country. I just wish some aspects of our culture would change a little...

Re:Why colonize space now?

[MS-06FZ]

The "technical reason it cannot be done" is because it would cost hundreds upon hundreds of billions of dollars. It's a money pit. It can be done, but the cost to do it now would be massive. Gargantuan. Phenomenal. All to keep a team of, say, five people safe and happy living in total isolation at a claustrophobic bunker a quarter million miles away from the nearest source of air, water, food, emergency medical care.

This is not to say that things which are expensive are not worth doing - but there is a balance. Cost vs. yield, risk vs. reward. Right now, cost and risk are still very high. Prohibitively high. Going to the moon and back was a fantastic stunt, one that ought to be regarded as a landmark of importance for the rest of human history - but that's all it was, a stunt. Consider each moon launch (carrying about 16 tons to the lunar surface) required a 3000 ton rocket and a shitload of rocket fuel. A $6.5 billion rocket program (in the 1960's - so that'd be around $30 billion today) yielded 10 trips to the moon with that payload. Technology has improved since then, so most likely lots of processes will be less expensive (obtaining and storing rocket fuel, I'm sure - computer systems obviously - better materials, etc. - but still the same basic technology.) But the process would need to be orders of magnitude less expensive to be feasible to support a space colony needing regular shipments of food, air, water, and so on to survive.

As for technology benefits - sure, those could potentially be accelerated a bit by hefty expenditures into development needed for a moon base. But here's the thing: technology advances anyway. Competition drives it to happen, as do various artificial factors. There will come a point where this natural progression of technology will make it practical to establish a long-term presence on the Moon. Maybe this means some kind of linear accelerator launch system, or some other system that hasn't been made practical yet. But we're not there yet. Creating a livable habitat anywhere outside of the atmosphere is not trivial, it's very complex and very expensive. Doing it a quarter million miles away only makes it more expensive and more dangerous.

Then there's this other wacky idea: we take the hundreds of billions of dollars that would have gone into the development of a moonbase, put the R&D allocations into the projects that would've gotten funding if the moonbase were actually happening - get the science and technology yields from project R&D, but then don't launch any rockets to the moon or build a moon base. Wouldn't that give us the same result for less money?

And what's with these "vehicles that don't require combustion"? Electric cars already exist, they're just not cost-effective or practical for people's usual daily requirements. Neither of those metrics have any meaning in the context of a moon program.

All this talk of moon bases is just wishful thinking at this point. There's a big difference between launching two men and several tons of gear to the moon's surface, and launching enough men and enough gear and enough supplies to build and sustain a permanent base. Our launching capability needs to be much more efficient before it's a practical possibility. The foundation of space flight needs to be improved before we start building moon bases.

"And for what?" - There has to be a definite return for all this expenditure. We're not ready to go to Mars, and we won't immediately be ready for a trip to Mars just by virtue of having one bunker on the Moon. Going to Mars is probably at least 15 years off. So what good does it do us to have the moon-base now?

About time!

[Dr. Eggman]

How many years has it been since that American flag fell over on the moon? We need to give it a proper moon burial (I mean, we can't exactly burn it up there...) and setup a new one!

In other news, NASA seeking photoshop specialist

[Anonymous Coward]

Must be familiar with prior moon "landings." Must be willing to sign NDA.

Up Close and Personal

[necro81]

If the probe will be orbiting 50 km from the lunar surface, then it will be about twice as close as the Apollo CSM ever got. The typical orbiting distance for that was about 60 nautical miles (about 100 km). By contrast, spy satellites for the military in a Low Earth Orbit are about 500 km above the Earth's surface, and they can (purportedly) read lisence plates. Naturally, the LRO won't be the size, or have the capabilities, of a military spy satellite. Even so, considering the advances in camera technology, even at NASA's cautious rate of adoption, the image quality one can expect will be extraordinary. If NASA was able to get meter-resolution back in the Apollo days, I wouldn't be surprised if we could get an order or magnitude (10 cm) finer detail this go around.

Re:Up Close and Personal

[PenGun]

Big Bird et al are at about 200K, that's why they don't last long and are launched for specific purposes.

      PenGun
    Dop What Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !

Re:Up Close and Personal

[twostar]

if I remember right, they're going for 5cm accuracy. Had to research this mission for my design class this year. We're using the LRO data to choose where we land our sample return. 5 freaking centimeters!

Conspiracy theory

[zardo]

You all know the real reason why they're doing this, don't you? We're photographing the moon because of reports that the soviets have a lunar base where they're harvesting human embryo's. Bush intends to nuke them.

And they'll probably use it to deploy images of a fake landing site, like anybody's ever going to believe that we really landed on the moon. Everybody knows that was made up.

Re:Conspiracy theory

[rufty_tufty]

And just look at the proof of this!
http://www.stuffucanuse.com/fake_moon_landings/moo n_landings.htm

An oldie I know, but I couldn't resist!

Re:How can you be sure?

[Don Negro]

Have you personally met anyone who has been to the moon?

Two of them, actually. All part of the fun of growing up near the JSC.

Here's an idea....

[WheelDweller]

Remember MIRV technology? How about we send a Delta-2 (or required launch craft) and put a ring around the moon of GPS satellites?

It would sure make mapping, navigating and everything else easier, no? How hard would that be, now that atomic clocks are so small?

BUT BE SURE THEY'RE USING FREQUENCIES that don't mingle with Earth GPS. (I remember a time I wouldn't have to say such obvious things...) :)

Re:Here's an idea....

[StefanJ]

I think some of the long-term Mars exploration plans call for a simple GPS net.

Something to help slow-moving crawlers and balloons figure out where they are.

Makes sense to do it on the moon, too.

Re:Here's an idea....

[iamlucky13]

That wouldn't make a lick of sense at the present time. You could spend hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars sticking up a constellation of navigation satellites for 4 astronauts at a time, or you could spend a couple hundred grand on a radio direction finder system like a mini-LORAN set up at each landing site.

Plus lunar orbits are unstable (the article didn't go into this in detail, but I suppose it's probably due to the big freaking ball of gravity somewhere off in the vicinity of Earth). The satellites would have to frequently adjust their orbits to maintain accuracy. If I remember right, knowing the precisely the orbit of the satellites is critical for the accuracy of GPS.

Re:Here's an idea....

[twostar]

the lunar orbit instability is mostly due to crazy changes in the lunar composition and desnity. Basically the gravity gradient is all messed up and does things to the orbiter. We're going to have to map is sometime and then update our models for the lunar orbits but that takes a mission in itself, or at least a couple secondary missions.

Re:Here's an idea....

[WheelDweller]

Very good points- all of'em. But think about government work...and the Hubble. Maybe now's the time to launch'em so they'll be ready before the starport is made! :)

Re:Here's an idea....

[Septje]

Clearly a basic understanding of orbital physics is requred here. Last time i checked, (and not much has changed) the moon's mass and size made it impossible to maintain a geostationary orbit around it, so that sort of GPS technology that is used on Earth wouldn't be possible.

Re:Here's an idea....

[WheelDweller]

That could be; I've never put a yardstick to it. It just seems that navigational aids would be a really nice thing. Not a lot of people know this, but I've not been ther before! :)

As I understand it . . .

[StefanJ]

. . . comets hit the moon, evaporate.

For a few glorious hours or days, the moon has an atmosphere or sorts, of vaporized comet juice.

Most of this gets stripped away, but some vapor finds its way into dark, permenantly shadowed nooks and crannies, where it stays pretty much forever.

Maybe. Maybe the H2 signatures found by the last probe were just traces of hydrogen bound to minerals. We'll find out after this thing does its work.

Breaking Political News!

[Xofer D]

"LRO will count craters and image American and Soviet landing sites."

Soviet, eh? Wow, I didn't know they were back in power. Just goes to show that your basic Red Soviet Commie doesn't know when to quit! Next thing you know Reagan will come back to office and kick their asses again, just like last time.

What's that? An error? Naw, I read it on the internet, that means it's true!

Re:Breaking Political News!

[susano_otter]

Soviet landing sites do exist on the moon, you know. They were established during the same period as the American landing sites.

Re:Breaking Political News!

[Anonymous Coward]

They were there first. There was more than manned missions, remember...

Re:Breaking Political News!

[Xofer D]

The USSR landed men on the moon? When did that happen exactly?

Re:Breaking Political News!

[AlterTick]

The USSR landed men on the moon? When did that happen exactly?

Who said anything about men? The Soviets safely landed seven probes of the Luna series, and a whole lot more... uh... impacted destructively. Details can be found on NASA's web site here:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunarus sr.html

It'sactually isn't amazing

[technoextreme]

I was actually quite amazed at how well some of the materials actually worked that were used during the Apollo mission. My boss said that a this tape that I was using was actually used on the lander. It is called kapton tape. I stared at it and then realzed how easy it would be for someone to think that it's utterly useless. Anyone not in my position (consistently chucking copious amounts of it into UV chambers without it degrading for a week) would think of it being stupid yellow tape. For people who think I'm making it up: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a12 /a12.landmovie.html That yellow stuff is the tape I use. Then again the freaking moon hoax idiots think the lunder lander was held together by this stuff.

Ha ha ha, they don't need to fly millions of miles

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't need to fly millions of miles to find the "landing sites". They could take Southwest Airlines to Vegas and drive a couple hundred miles and get all the photos they want. The moon landing was fake.

Remains of russian cosmonauts

[alexfromspace]

I hope the public may see photos or proofs of the remains of russian cosmonauts that got there first but were never meant to come back.

Re:Remains of russian cosmonauts

[susano_otter]

Why would you hope for something like this?

I, for one, hope that no Russian cosmonauts were sent to die on suicide moon missions, and that rumors to the contrary are nothing more than macabre urban legends.

Re:Remains of russian cosmonauts

[geekoid]

I never even heard that one. Or at least I don't remember, maybe it's old age.

Re:Remains of russian cosmonauts

[Buran]

Uh, you don't have to have a manned spacecraft to have a landing site of a spacecraft. The article doesn't say anything about cosmonauts because there were never any on the Moon but there's lots of Luna spacecraft. The first successful soft landing was carried out by Luna 9, actually.

Yet again someone manages to RTFA but doesn't do basic research before opening their mouth and revealing their uninformed state.

Re:Remains of russian cosmonauts

[alexfromspace]

The replies to my post are presumptiously stating some non-existing evidence that supposedly refute my comment as some kind of trumped up rumor, giving my comment a 0 score. If the slashdot community prefers to rudely reject unpopular ideas, as is the case here, then I declare slashdot redundant and my posting time here is over.

Re:Remains of russian cosmonauts

[shadowdata]

okie ... bye!!!

Space Command demands the high ground?

[AHuxley]

Just some background on the reasons why you want to map the moon.
"full spectrum dominance of the battlespace"

http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=so0 0richelson

and more at

http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=nd0 3moore

I wonder how the rest of the world will react to this?
Will they go 'big' and race to the moon?
Or go smart and do more with less?

In capitalist west US military maps moon.
In Soviet Union KGB maps your room.

Where do the Austrailians stand?

[ScottCooperDotNet]

Being a Firefox user I've become accustomed to reading the BBC. They seem to treat most acronyms as ordinary words. Is this an analog/analogue issue? Where do the Austrailians stand?

Re:Where do the Austrailians stand?

[CrazyJim1]

Where do the Austrailians stand?

In Austrailia.

*ducks*

Re:Where do the Austrailians stand?

[Whiteox]

Catholic Australian Primary children were always taught to place full stops after each letter of an ancronym. If you didn't, you were hit with a ruler or sometimes even clipped around the ear by a Nun, as she would repeat, "If you are going to write, then DO IT PROPERLY! ."
Catholic Australian High School students were taught more colloquial writing and acronyms were allowed to be spelt without full stops in text or dialogue IF it was pronounced eg Say NASA or N.A.S.A.
Acronyms in titles, sub-headings etc had to include full stops.

Craters by the poles

[Gorimek]

You're right that there is no dark side of the moon in the Pink Floyd sense.

But there are small patches where sunlight never reaches. Craters or valleys near the poles. Or caves for that matter.

There are similar places on earth, but they're not as dark and cold due to light and heat being carried by our atmosphere. On the moon, one side of a hill can be tropically hot and the other minus hundreds of degrees.

Re:Craters by the poles

[Anonymous Coward]

one side of a hill can be tropically hot

Yeah but it's a dry heat.

Hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it have high resolution, ground penetrating radar? Pretty pictures is nice and everything, but you'd think they'd be more interested in topigraphical maps, buried features, etc. Why don't they have sufficent data about the moon by now, what with all the probes that have been sent up since we got Sputnik-envy?

Hmm...

[Millenniumman]

Can it run Linux? If so, I'm making beowulf cluster of these.

The Apollo sites will get disturbed...

[NotQuiteReal]

The Apollo sites will get disturbed...

When space travel gets cheap enough - especially if eBay is still around by then.

Or maybe sooner - might not an Indian or Chinese souvineer seeker stop by?

What are the salvage rights to that kind of stuff?

That does pre-suppose

[jd]

...that the ice they are talking about is frozen H2O. NASA is horrifically low on money, so when its administrators start talking about locating stashes of "ice" and "snow", one has to wonder...

Now What Will THe Hoaxers Say?

[AlterTick]

For months I've been reading the ApolloHoax.net/clavius.org forum wherein a handful of ignorant goofballs continuously argue with scores of rational people about whether the moon landings were faked. When asked what it will take to prove to them that the landings are real, most essentially essentially evade the question because they're not interested in the truth-- they want to believe the conspiracy. But one nut at least likes to ask "why doesn't NASA go back and take some pictures if it's really true?" The rebuttal is usually along the lines of "even if they did, you'd claim THOSE were faked too". It will be interesting to see how long it takes him to start shouting "PHOTOSHOP!" once the pics come out...

Really, I think the best proof that it's not a hoax is that there's no way that many people could keep a secret for that long.

Re:Now What Will THe Hoaxers Say?

[xtal]

Really, I think the best proof that it's not a hoax is that there's no way that many people could keep a secret for that long.

Never worked in the defense industry, have you? There is PLENTY that gets locked down and stays that way. F o r e v e r.

Stanton Friedman did a great rebuttal of that misconception on one of his Roswell books. Before you laugh too loud, have a look into his background.

Re:Now What Will THe Hoaxers Say?

[Buran]

Try again. Stuff that the government thinks is secret really isn't. You really can't keep a secret once you involve more than a small handful of people. Say, more than zero. Whether accidentally or not, the information tends to get out. The length of time it takes does vary, but 40 years is pushing it.

Re:Now What Will THe Hoaxers Say?

[Anonymous Coward]

"For months I've been reading the ApolloHoax.net/clavius.org forum wherein a handful of ignorant goofballs continuously argue..."

That's nothing! For years I've been reading Slashdot where 90% of the participants are ignorant paranoid goofballs and they don't even argue they only opinionate!

Re:Now What Will THe Hoaxers Say?

[AlterTick]

Never worked in the defense industry, have you? There is PLENTY that gets locked down and stays that way. F o r e v e r.

Utter nonsense. I've worked in the civilian defense industry and prior to that I was in military intelligence. Whether something is classified or not has almost no relation to whether it's common knowledge. As we were told early on, what's classified is generally not the facts themselves, but the verification that they're true. There are indeed things that stay unknown essentially forever, but they are very small, unimportant things, like the SINCGARS radio encryption keys we used in Feb 1990. The actual secrecy of something is inversely proportional to its scope, times its importance, times the number of years it's been around. It would be absolutely, utterly impossible to keep a series of faked moon landings secret for that long.

In order to believe it was a hoax, one must believe one of two things: A) most or all of the scientists, engineers, and workers at the contractors who built the Apollo mission components were in on the hoax, or B) only the top brass at NASA knew, and the contractors thought they were building real moon shot hardware.

In order for A) to work they'd have to pay off or threaten literally thousands of people to keep them quiet. And yet, in the 40 years since then there has not been a single deathbed confession, anonymous book, or even subtle hinting by disgruntled former employees of Apollo contractors. It would be literally impossible to keep that many people completely silent for this long, no matter what leverage you applied.

That leaves us with B). A conspiracy kept down to the top officials is somewhat more plausible. However, it requires that all the contractors believe they are building hardware that's actually going to the moon. Now, in what kind of idiot universe do you have to live to believe that NASA would blow a huge wad of dough on several missions worth of lunar-capable equipment, and then not use it, instead incurring the additonal expense and burden of secretly simulating a moon landing? What would be the possible point?

Re:Now What Will THe Hoaxers Say?

[AlterTick]

Stanton Friedman did a great rebuttal of that misconception on one of his Roswell books. Before you laugh too loud, have a look into his background.

I have looked into his background, and I'm still laughing. The man's a kook.

Re:Now What Will THe Hoaxers Say?

[xtal]

We're not talking about claiming the moon landing is a hoax.

The government is perfectly capable of keeping classified materials that way forever.

Specifics about the internals of, say, a neutron device or stress concentrations in turbines used in the stealth bomber? That's a different matter altogether.

Re:Now What Will THe Hoaxers Say?

[AlterTick]

We're not talking about claiming the moon landing is a hoax.

Then why the fuck did you bother replying to my original post about the moon landing not being a hoax? Clearly I wasn't talking about the smaller stuff, as I illustrated in my last post. Ever heard of CONTEXT? Or were you just being cotrarian to start an argument.

The government is perfectly capable of keeping classified materials that way forever. Specifics about the internals of, say, a neutron device or stress concentrations in turbines used in the stealth bomber? That's a different matter altogether.

Is there an echo in here. That's precisely the point I made in my previous post. Small stuff stays secret. Big stuff doesn't.

Re:Now What Will THe Hoaxers Say?

[xtal]

Or were you just being cotrarian to start an argument.

Isn't that the point?


Small stuff stays secret. Big stuff doesn't.


How would you know, for sure? :-)

buggy

[__aapspi39]

Anyone who thinks that landing a few spods on the surface of the moon was a worthwhile enterprise would probably be at the same intellectual level as those who reckon that the whole thing was faked; not quite the full shilling in either case. As was mentioned earlier, those in doubt should have a look at the data that the Soviets gathered (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1 & 2.) It does seem that the Russian efforts, especially in this regard, were without much of the risk that characterized the fruitless and idiotic attempts at glory that most manned space exploration has involved- before it was largely dropped.

You obviously misundestand

[soldeed]

Ahem! I meant EXISTING landing sites! Apollo? I dont recall the names of the soviet rovers and probes, but the soviets put them there so therefore they are SOVIET landing sites! capiche?

Re:How can you be sure?

[this great guy]

How do can I prove that all my family members aren't actors

Easy, if your mom has small boobs, then she is not an actress.

Re:weird...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, the different camps at NASA should all read slashdot, so they'll know as much about what's going on as you do.

Side effects

[Anonymous Coward]

Value can be realized not only in the stated goal (colonization), but also in the process required to get there. Spending billions on the scientific research required to make it a reality will undoubtedly also result in the improvement of other related areas. Perhaps the discoveries made will make propulsion in general cheaper, faster, and more economical, having benefits for cars, planes, as well as rockets. Perhaps materials science will advance and we'll come up with something on par with the significance of plastics. Or maybe we'll come up with something that will be able to withstand immense pressure, or immense heat. There are all kinds of discoveries waiting to be made along the path to whereever we decide to go. Just the general increased interest in the sciences will benefit our society immensely.

Re:How can you be sure?

[LouisZepher]

I think some people from the First Church of Last-Thursdayism would like to give you some reading material. Why not simply say reality itself is a hoax? Or that even the hoax is a hoax?

Re:How can you be sure?

[rbarreira]

LOL. :P

Re:How can you be sure?

[ubergamer1337]

They wrote a book about this. It was called 1984. It sucked.

Of course there is ice

[makus_sickby]

"A far Ultraviolet instrument will enable it to see into areas permanently in shadow and see if there is indeed ice there."

If comets are largely ice, and they've crashed into earth, then clearly they've hit the moon as well. So it stands to reason that there must be ice there in shadowed areas.

Re:Of course there is ice

[kylegordon]

Unless the ice vaporizes on impact, and escapes back into space...

Re:How can you be sure?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you've seen The Truman Show before, huh?

Re: video proof that it was faked!

[marcop]

Here's your proof that it was a fake!

Actually, moontruth.com used to have content about how the video was made. It was filmed in England and done as a joke.

From the... dept.

[Trogre]

Hey it looks like this story isn't regarded important enough to get it's own department.

How about from the did-they-or-didn't-they dept

Yes, I have no life.

Re:Details about the spacecraft and its capabiliti

[bjomo]

While you are pointing to a great website, I think this page,
http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/missions/index.html
is a better starting place. Your is directly to the LROC, which is an instrument on LRO. This link will take you directly to the mission overview, from which you can find info on all the instruments and such.

On a personal note I am glad to see slashdot pick up this story, since I was at the preliminary design review for LRO today.

Try LRO, not LRR

[bjomo]

Orbiter NOT rover.

Re:How can you be sure?

[Anonymous Coward]

They also lied about 9/11

Earthquakes are pretty weak and rare

[lightyear4]

Earthquakes are pretty weak and rare Yeah you're right, they are pretty rare on the moon.

Re:How can you be sure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I just have to figure out who is lying to me.

Your girlfriend, aka the hooker you regularly see, that keeps telling you your willy is bigger than average.

And my friend she has been to other people's willies so she does know for a fact.

Apollo was faked, and so will this one be...

[aqk]

Lissen, everyone knows (well, the top 50% of us do) that the Apollo moon landings were faked, and of course these new Lunar orbitors will be also!

As proof, I offer you the fact, not theory, that fully 50% of the American people are below average intelligence. Do you think any OTHER country on this planet exhibits these dismal intellectual statistics? How could the USA have ever gone to the moon with this average IQ level?

For that matter, there is no such thing as North America (or South America). We "North Americans" number no more than about 35,000 deluded people, and we live in a large compound in France.

Yes, FRANCE, Dammit! Get used to it. It's time someone spoke up against this "Theory of Columbus" !

Re:Apollo was faked, and so will this one be...

[MikeBabcock]

Please explain to me how 'average' intelligence has any more to do with going to the moon than the average income of the US has to do with the size of Hollywood actors' homes.

Going to the moon is a specialized task for a "few" specialized people.

Lockheed Martin pulled together the engineers to design the SR-71 from those 'sub-average' intelligence people too.

There are many extraordinary people in the world, the question is whether they have resources and get recognition.

Re:Apollo was faked, and so will this one be...

[Phist]

Think of a scale between zero and 10. The average on a scale between zero and 10 is 5 (5 is right smack in the middle)so then ~50% of the scale is below average.

Don't feel bad. It took me .0003x5/.015 seconds to get the joke.

P.S. it must have been faked because i personally didn't see it happen.

Soviets would not have let us get away with it

[soldeed]

I am 45, and grew up during Apollo missions. I closely followed every mission. I KNOW it happened. It could not be faked. If you disagree, consider, If it were a hoax the Soviet Union and any other country with a radio telescope could tell it was. On launch mornings, the television coverage would include a shot of the Soviet "trawler" hanging off the coast observing the proceedings. In fact, the soviets were very interested in observing our spaceflights. They tracked them in orbit, they tracked them going , decending, acending, and returning from the moon, and then at the splashdown theres another "trawler" hangin around. It was easy to do! you did'nt need a powerful radar as the spacecraft was constantly beaming back telemetry data and radio transmissions in the clear. Unbeknownst to the rest of the world at the time because of their absolute secrecy, the Soviets manned lunar programwas having a little trouble with their N1 boosters blowing up. In light of their own failure, and the general hostile attitude toward the United States, you cannot convince me that they would just stand by and let us evil capitalist pigs get away such a fakery! WE WENT!

Re:Soviets would not have let us get away with it

[Thorsten Timberlake]

Very convincing point, not that I had any doubts myself.
...Unless of course, like vertinox points out above, the cold war was faked as well :)
But well, if you're willing to believe that, you probably aren't worth debating with anyway.

Re:How can you be sure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi there, come this way and meet this guy names Descartes in the dark corner. What he basically says is you can't be sure of anything except your own existence. Welcome to the world !

Re:How can you be sure?

[Whiteox]

Hey man, he's wrong!
I'm not sure of my own existence except when I look in the mirror.
Some people have to see it for themselves.... sort of Gestalt.

Reading comprehension 101 nazi

[Anonymous Coward]

"The science programme, which Griffin called one of the nation's "crown jewels", increases by just 1.5% compared to 2006."

Does not equal:

"Now, "crown jewel" NASA has been and can be..."

You did not comprehend that Griffin was talking about NASAs science programme being one of the nation's "crown jewels", not NASA itself.

That's just one example, there are plenty more miscomprehensions making your post irrelevant.

There is only one thing worse than the illiterate and that is those who think that they are literate when indeed they are not.

You want clues with that?

[DaveInAZ]

That whooshing sound you heard was the joke going over your head. I'm guessing you didn't read the whole post before replying to it because even the lower half of the population as defined by IQ would have gotten the joke when they read the last couple of lines.

Re:You want clues with that?

[aqk]

I got this IQ 'average' thing from a story I read somewhere that one of President Eisenhower's advisors told him about a crisis just after Sputnik went up-
"Fully 50% of our population have below-average IQ!"
Eisenhower was clearly alarmed by this statistic.

But of course there's hope yet- NPR reports that in Lake Woebegon, Minn., all the women are strong, all the men are good looking and all the children are above average.
- "Prairie Home Companion" on NPR.

Reality Check Please

[LifesABeach]

Facts, not "Dreams of What Could Be":

0. The study of, "To Many Rats In the Rat Cage."

1. This planet is not getting any bigger.

2. There are more people alive today than ever existed.

3. It's the zealous naive logic like the parent submittal that HAS lead directly to the inner cultural tensions; Because 35 years ago We Were On The Moon.

GoogleMoon

[mlippert]

So how long after the pictures are taken will the entire moon be available on GoogleMoon?