The rover needs to be able to stay in contact with Earth while also exploring craters to study water ice, the mission team members were able to use extensive mapping data from LRO and decided to land the rover near the western edge of Nobile crater. VIPER is part of NASA's Artemis Program and is currently scheduled to launch late 2024. LRO data was used to help choose a landing site for NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, mission. They can use LRO's maps to select landing sites or find promising spots for longer-term habitation, such as points with access to subsurface water. Meanwhile, mission planners on Earth can rely on LRO's data. They want to use it to understand the moon's history and composition: everything from the water ice that might lie under the surface to the volcanic activity that might have shaped the moon in its past, according to NASA. Scientists can use LRO's data to better understand the moon's surface environment in far greater detail than they could with any mission before. Related: Amazing moon photos from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter LRO carries a toolbox of several instruments that it can use to map the moon's surface, probe the layers just underneath, search for volatiles like water, and test how humans will fare in the moon's surrounding space. LRO came to the moon with two chief purposes: Studying the moon for scientists and surveying the moon for future missions. Arizona State University's website also updates LRO's position every five minutes. You can see where the LRO is with NASA's live LRO tracker. The orbit slowly processes around the moon such that LRO flies over a specific location about twice an Earth month. The orbit takes LRO over the lunar poles, where interest in human habitation is highest.
#Lunar reconnaissance orbiter photos of apollo landing sites full
The probe takes roughly two Earth hours to complete one full orbit. When it reached the moon in 2009, this was the closest to the moon that any orbiter had come. LRO lives in a circular orbit, roughly 31 miles (50 kilometers) above the lunar surface, according to NASA. Now, LRO has found new life as a forward scout for the Artemis program, NASA's project to return humans to the moon's surface Where is the LRO? Still, LRO orbited on, evolving into a more dedicated science mission.īut NASA's priorities continued to shift. Unfortunately, budget cuts meant that Constellation did not materialize. LRO was launched as an initial step and support for NASA's Constellation program, which planned to put humans on the moon by 2020. When it launched, LRO was NASA's first lunar orbiter since Lunar Prospector in 1998. It arrived in lunar orbit five days later and settled into its final orbit by September.
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