NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is closer than ever to the lunar surface, thanks to a recent maneuver made by the agency that moved the spacecraft to within 12 miles of the moon's south pole.
This is the closest that the spacecraft has ever been to the moon's surface and scientists hope that being so close means that we'll get unprecedented photos of the moon's south pole, along with new data, including information about whether there is a presence of water (or has ever been a presence of water) on that region of the lunar surface.
The maneuver that lowered LRO's orbit around the moon went off without a hitch, but that's no surprise as it is the kind of thing NASA flight controllers do all the time. Last night, flight controllers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland maneuvered LRO through two rocket burns to change its orbit.
Of course, this didn't happen until scientists determined that the lower orbit would bring no harm to the spacecraft. In fact, it's likely that LRO can stay in its new position for up to several years.
The LRO's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) instrument will now get a better signal for getting measurements of specific areas of the moon's south pole, while the Diviner instrument can observe features on the lunar surface at a higher resolution. LRO's other four instruments will also collect data on the moon's surface.
"The lunar poles are still places of mystery where the inside of some craters never see direct sunlight and the coldest temperatures in the solar system have been recorded," says John Keller, LRO project scientist at NASA Goddard. "By lowering the orbit over the South Pole, we are essentially magnifying the sensitivity of the LRO instruments which will help us understand the mechanisms by which water or other volatiles might be trapped there."
The LRO launched in 2009 and has orbited the moon ever since. Its original mission was to map out the moon's surface, but NASA extended that mission with other scientific objectives. Because of the LRO, we've seen the moon in a completely new light and data collected from the spacecraft's observations has unveiled many lunar mysteries.
In 2010, scientists using LRO data delivered the most detailed topographic map of the moon's surface than we've ever seen before. Data from LRO also helped scientists put together the following video of the moon's phases through 2015:
[Photo Credit: NASA/GSFC/SVS]
