LRO development Options

[jamescanvin]

Just read this interesting article about LRO

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/28apr_lro.htm

"This is the first in a string of missions," says Gordon Chin, project scientist for LRO at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "More robots will follow, about one per year, leading up to manned flight" no later than 2020."

One per Year? Is this just wishful thinking or have any tentitve plans been mentioned for follow up missions after LRO? If the next one is going to be 2009/10 then I guess some desisions about it will have to be made fairly soon.

James

[Phil Stooke]

The irregularities in the gravitational field are (simply put) caused by the excess mass of those mare lavas. They filled holes in a surface that had isostatically adjusted after the basin impacts, but then became too rigid to adjust again after the lava filled the depressions.

LRO will use regular chemical thrusters to maintain its low orbit.

It will map the whole moon at low resolution, but only select areas at high resolution.

And it will try to image landing and impact sites. But it will not necessarily get all of them because we don't know where they all are with sufficient accuracy to hit them with the high resolution images. For instance Lunokhod 1 is uncertain by at least 5 km, Luna 9 by probably 40 km. Apollo landing sites will be no problem. of course.

Phil