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

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.

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?

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: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: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.