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

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

And [LRO] 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.

Yes, the Russian landing sites will be hard if not impossible to find.

I believe Clementine UVVIS had the spatial resolution to spectrally resolve the individual sampling stations at the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 landing sites. On the other hand, the precise locations of the Luna and Lunokhod sites are virtually unknown, even to the Russians. In fact, Blewitt et al. [1997] reported an excellent linear correlation between the spectral Fe and Ti parameters and the average FeO and TiO2 contents of lunar soils that were sampled at each station/site for the final three lunar missions. And they felt that their correlation was strong enough to permit extrapolation to the Moon as a whole. Interestingly, they reported that the reported Russian Luna 24 site does not fit this model, which led them to believe that the site is either nonrepresentative or that the Russian reported coordinates are in error.

Reference:

Blewitt, D.T., et al., "Clementine images of the lunar sample-return stations: Refinement of FeO and TiO2 mapping techniques", J. Geophys. Res. 102, 16319-16325 (1997).