Thursday, August 20, 2009

LRO & Chandrayaan to team up, Aug. 20

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and India's Chandrayaan-1 will team up on August 20 to perform a Bi-Static radar experiment to search for water ice in a crater on the Moon's north pole.

Both spacecraft will be in close proximity, approximately 200 km above the lunar surface, and both are equipped with radar instruments. The two instruments will look at the same location from different angles. Chandrayaan's radar will transmit a signal to be reflected off the interior of Erlanger crater and then received by LRO.

Scientists will then compare the signal that bounces straight back to Chandrayaan with the signal from a slightly different angle received by LRO and assemble unique information, particularly about any water ice that may be present inside Erlanger.

Both spacecraft are equipped with a NASA Miniature Radio Frequency (RF) instrument that functions as a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), known as Mini-SAR on Chandrayaan-1 and Mini-RF on LRO.

Read the full story HERE.

No comments: