The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter at the Midpoint of the Exploration Mission

Introduction: The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft (LRO) was launched on June 18, 2009 and arrived at the Moon 5 days later on June 23. LRO’s mission, as part of NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD), is to seek safe landing sites for future robotic missions or the return of humans to the Moon. In addition LRO’s primary objectives include the search for resources and to investigate the Lunar radiation environment. Upon arriving at the Moon LRO began a commissioning phase, in which the spacecraft and instruments were fully activated and underwent in-flight calibration. These activities took place while the spacecraft was in a low maintenance polar orbit with periand apo-selene of 30 and 216 km from the Lunar surface. After commissioning, the spacecraft was inserted into its Exploration Mission orbit of 50 ± 15 km on Sept. 15, 2009. The spacecraft spends the bulk of its time with the instruments pointed in the nadir direction, however to support the LCROSS mission, on Oct. 9 the instruments were rotated to look above the Lunar limb as the spacecraft passed the launch vehicle upper stage, which had, moments before, impacted a permanently shadowed area within Cabeus crater. The Exploration Mission for ESMD will be completed on September 15, 2010. LRO will then begin a two-year Science Mission. This presentation updates the status and recent results from the LRO Exploration Mission, as well as the plans for the Science Mission, and gives a brief description of the instrument payload. The payload includes: