NASA latest moon mission blasts off successfully - Science Recorder

NASA's latest robotic spacecraft made a flawless lift-off into space late Friday night in an historic moonshot from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) soared heavenward aboard an unmanned Orbital Sciences Corporation's Minotaur V rocket. LADEE (pronounced like "laddie")–only 7.7 feet (2.4 meters) long and 4.7 feet (1.9 meters) wide–will orbit the moon and is designed to study the lunar atmosphere, conditions on the moon's surface, and environmental influences on lunar dust. The satellite will take about a month to reach the moon, making three laps around Earth before getting close enough to snap into lunar orbit. The six-month $280 million mission will end when LADEE's orbit decays naturally and it makes a kamikaze dive to crash into the moon's surface. LADEE is equipped with three primary scientific instruments: the UltraViolet and Visible Light Spectrometer, the Neutral Mass Spectrometer, and the Lunar Dust Experiment. It is also carrying the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration payload, designed to investigate the feasibility of using lasers instead of radio signals to transmit data to Earth–resulting in faster bandwidth using smaller devices and substantially less power. "There's no question that as we send humans farther out into the solar system, certainly to Mars, that laser communications will be needed to send high-definition and 3-D video," said NASA's science mission chief John Grumsfeld. Grumsfeld is a former astronaut who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. Just hours after LADEE's perfect launch, NASA officials reported a glitch involving a shutdown of the spacecraft's reaction wheels, which point and stabilize LADEE in space without having to use precious thruster fuel. By Saturday afternoon, however, the glitch was traced to safety limits programmed into LADEE prior to launch to protect the reaction wheel system, NASA officials said. Engineers have now disabled the safety limits and will take special care in restoring safety-limit protocols. "Our engineers will determine the appropriate means of managing the reaction wheel fault protection program. Answers will be developed over time and will not hold up checkout activities," NASA's LADEE project manager Butler Hine said in a statement. According to NASA Ames Research Center director Pete Worden, the reaction wheel issue has been resolved. "The LADEE spacecraft is healthy and communicating with mission operators," he said. The next lift-off event from Wallops Island is scheduled for Nov. 4, when a Minotaur 1 rocket launches ORS-3, which will carry a multi-satellite payload consisting of at least 25 spacecraft. via Science - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNFUPfopebQp1u_jKCYkDNZDlsdbaQ&url=http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/nasa-latest-moon-mission-blasts-off-successfully/

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