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]

Alex, you can't really say that Clementine 'resolved' the Apollo sampling sites - which in effect are only as big as the scoop or the rock which was picked up. What you can say is that we know which Clementine UVVIS pixel the sampling site is in. So the multispectral characteristics of that pixel can be described and searched for elsewhere.

My LPSC abstract (print-only, as I can't be there - look at the moon section under 'print-only) discusses this topic.

Here's an example. This is the Luna 24 landing area. If L24 was 10 km off its predicted location it could lie on the higher albedo unit at lower left or on Fahrenheit ejecta, or on a mare ridge (though that's not likely to differ chemically from its surroundings). THe grid is 0.25 degrees. The image is from the Apollo 15 panoramic camera.



Phil

[Bob Shaw]

Phil:

At least with the later Apollo flights and the Soviet rovers there's the prospect of seeing an albedo difference resulting from the passage of the vehicle, which may lead to some accurate LRO camera pointing (obviously not really a problem with regard to Apollo sites, which are well known, but potentially a method of finding the Lunokhods). After all, look at MGS and the MER tracks - I doubt if a mere forty years of space weathering will have wiped out the tracks on the Moon!

Bob Shaw