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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ LRO & LCROSS _ About the lunar impact

Posted by: Loiserl Oct 14 2009, 10:15 PM

Hi there,

Does anybody know how far away the LCROSS was at the time Centaur hit the Moon? It happens that I've found some guys (some nuts, actually) saying that due to the size of the crater, all of it should fill the camera's view at the distance the LCROSS took the images, but the thing is at what distance it followed Centaur.

Regards!

Posted by: elakdawalla Oct 14 2009, 10:25 PM

This is a good source for lots of mission info
http://lro.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/LRO_LCROSS_presskit.pdf
Both craft were traveling at ~2.5 km/s prior to impact, impacts were ~4 min or ~240 sec apart, so 2.5 * 240 gives you 600 km separation. The other thing you need to know is the FOV of the LCROSS cameras. The document here
http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/docs/LCROSS_Payload_Summary.doc
says mid-IR camera (which detected flash) has a 15 by 11 deg FOV.

--Emily

Posted by: Loiserl Oct 14 2009, 10:35 PM

Thanks a lot. I knew before that it was 600km away after some fast estimations, but I wanted to be sure because some sources came up with very strange things...
Bye!