LCROSS en route |
LCROSS en route |
Jul 15 2009, 03:08 PM
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 87 Joined: 9-November 07 Member No.: 3958 |
While we're waiting for Those Pictures, here are a couple of shots of LCROSS from our campus observatory last night (0221, 027 UT on 15 July). 4 minute exposures tracking expected motion from the Horizons ephemeris, within 20 degrees of the southern horizon and fighting summertime haze as well as city lights. I wanted to catch it before its inclined orbit takes it too far south, after which it spends a week or so as a predawn object. The range was about 563,000 km, and the Centaur is no bigger than a CSM/LM combination, so this is a more difficult target than spotting an Apollo enroute was. (On the other hand, nobody had CCD imagers in 1969).
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Aug 10 2009, 07:25 AM
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#2
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 29 Joined: 11-May 09 Member No.: 4772 |
An article on the "cold side bake-out" process (to get rid of water contained in the Centaur stage's foam layer) can be found here: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/lcross/090810bakeout/
Two bakeouts have been completed, with at least one more to go. The target crater for the impat will be decided upon early September, and NASA tentatively plans to announce the target crater around Sept. 10. Last week, LCROSS looked back at Earth as part of an calibration of its science payload. More details can be found here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/main/ |
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