Definitive story of Augustine Committee meeting, last week

We have been asked why we have yet to post anything about the public panel presentations, during the first meeting, last week, of President Obama's Human Space Flight Review Committee, aka, Augustine Commission II, in honor of its chairman Norm Augustine, who chaired a more long term look at human spaceflight in late 1990.

The reason is simple. We knew Jeff Foust of Space Politics and the Space Review was in attendance.

The Review of US Human Space Flight Plans Committee
held their first public meeting in Washington last week.
- The Space Review

Although he kept Twitter Followers informed of events at the meeting as they happened, we knew Jeff Foust was there for a reason. He was bound to write it up, in this case, for the essential Space Review, the online publication s a "periscope into reality," with its latest series of excellent articles coming out every Monday.

The Space Review - June 22 : "The existence of the Augustine committee (officially the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans Committee) has been widely interpreted to be a vote of no confidence in NASA’s current human spaceflight plans, in particular Constellation, by the White House. After all, if everything was going well—or at least perceived to be going well by the new administration—there would be little need for an independent review. The existence of the committee has provided a new opening for those who want to replace the current architecture with any number of alternatives."

"The committee’s first meeting, held last Wednesday at the Carnegie Institute for Science in Washington, DC, appeared to confirm those beliefs. Much of the eight-hour hearing was devoted to examining Constellation and well as several alternative systems that could be ready sooner and/or with less money than the incumbent. And while the committee dropped no hints about what direction it might be leaning, the hearing certainly triggered discussion within and outside the meeting that will last all summer, if not beyond."

Read and comment on the story HERE.

The Presentations

Meeting Agendas
- June 17 Public Agenda (pdf, 11k)

Meeting Presentations
- 9:20am - Summary of past studies - NASA/Mike Hawes (pdf, 60k)
- 9:30am - Constellation Program - Nasa/Doug Cooke (pdf, 4.55MB)
- 10:00am - ISS Partner Discussion - ESA - Jean-Jacques Dordain (pdf, 241k)
- 10:00am - ISS Partner Discussion - RSA - Perminov (pdf, 460k)
- 12:00pm - Comments via Website (pdf, 81k)
- 1:00pm - EELV Considerations - NASA Expendable Launch Services Current Use of EELV - Lynn Cline (pdf, 590k)
- 1:00pm - EELV Considerations - Briefing to the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee - Michael Gass (pdf, 3.03MB)
- 1:00pm - EELV Considerations - Initial Summary of Human Rated Delta IV Heavy Study - Gary Pulliam (pdf, 123k)
- 2:00pm - Other Commercial Launch Capabilities - NASA COTS - NASA/Doug Cooke (pdf, 773k)
- 2:00pm - Other Commercial Launch Capabilities - SpaceX COTS - SpaceX (pdf, 3.67MB)
- 2:00pm - Other Commercial Launch Capabilities - Orbital COTS - Orbital (pdf, 3.34MB)
- 2:00pm - Other Commercial Launch Capabilities - ISS CRS - NASA/Mike Suffredini (pdf, 790k)
- 3:30pm - Alternative Architectures - Direct - Steve Metschan (pdf, 26.9MB)
- 3:30pm - Alternative Architectures - Shuttle Side-mount Options - NASA/John Shannon (pdf, 2.35MB)

The Committee Website

Retrospective: 2006

NASA minimum lunar habitat and exploration architecture, c. 2009
as presented late in the now-late Constellation era [NASA].

Moon Base Announced by NASA

John Roach
National Geographic News
December 4, 2006

NASA plans to construct a solar-powered outpost at one the moon's poles, officials with the U.S. space agency announced today.

The outpost concept was chosen over a competing strategy similar to the 1960s and '70s Apollo program—a series of brief trips to the moon.

The moon base will allow for sustained human presence on the moon's surface and help the agency prepare for future missions to Mars and beyond, explained NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale.

"It also enables global partnerships, allows for maturation of in situ resource utilization, and results in a path that is much quicker in terms of future exploration," Dale said at a press conference.

The announcement was part of NASA's congressionally mandated strategy to meet U.S. President George W. Bush's "Vision for U.S. Space Exploration," a plan outlined in 2004.

The Bush plan includes returning humans to the moon no later than 2020. The goal is to take advantage of the moon's resources and to establish a launching point for further explorations.

Dale added that the space agency is looking to international partners in the private and public sectors to participate in the construction and use of the moon base.

Once Dale and more than a thousand experts from 14 countries had decided to build a base, the obvious question was where.

"What we're looking at is polar locations—both the north pole and south pole," she said.

Notional: A Partial Eclipse of the Sun by Earth, as it might be viewed
from Rozhdestvenskiy crater [LP].

The moon's poles are believed to be bathed in near constant sunlight, which should allow for solar power generation.

In addition, polar temperatures are relatively moderate. Other lunar regions tend to fluctuate between extreme heat and cold.

Furthermore, the poles contain craters whose slopes may be permanently in the shadows—an indication that water ice and other potentially useful chemicals may be available.

"It's also interesting to note that we know very little about the poles on the moon. In fact, we know more about Mars," said Scott Horowitz, associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Missions Directorate.

Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator for the directorate, said one potential location is at the edge of Shackleton Crater. Located at the south pole, the crater is sunlit 75 to 80 percent of the time.

"And it is adjacent to a permanently dark region where there are potentially volatiles"—substances such as water ice, which would likely evaporate if exposed to much sunlight—"that we can extract and use," he said.

The potential site, he added, is about the size of the Washington Mall, which measures about 0.9 square mile (2.4 square kilometers).

Moon Lander

NASA envisions using an all-purpose lander that maximizes the amount of cargo that can be shipped to the moon in a single trip, Cooke said.

Horowitz likened the lander, which is in the preliminary design stages, to a pickup truck.

"You can put whatever you want in the bed. You take it to wherever you want, and so you can deliver cargo, crew [and] do it robotically [or] do it with humans onboard. These are the types of things we are looking for," he said.

"What you can put on the surface allows you to develop a capability much more quickly. The more you can land, the better it is."

The current plan envisions incremental base construction beginning in 2020 with four-person crews making seven-day visits to the moon until their basic necessities are in place.

The rim of Shackleton Crater and the South Pole of the Moon. For a few years, between the report of the Columbia accident investigation board and not long after this image was captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009, establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon was official U.S. National Space Policy. LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) observation M105824863L, orbit 754, August 25, 2009; angle of incidence 88.83° at a resolution of 82 centimeters per pixel from an altitude of 46.37 kilometers [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Moon base not 'abandoned'

Inflated Lunar Base Concept (2008 notional - NASA)

Reports following testimony Wednesday, April 29, from NASA acting administrator Chris Scolese saying "NASA may abandon plans for moon base" are incorrect.

Congress and the President might one day, even soon, decide to abandon the long-term national goal of setting up a manned station on the Moon, but such a change in policy did not happen, nor was it remotely hinted at, today.

Nothing in Soclese's testimony before a U.S. House committee was inconsistent with present law or NASA policy.

On October 15, 2008 Congress passed the Fiscal Year 2009 NASA budget, and in the language of that legislation (H.R. 6063) was the following, now known as Public Law 110-422.

"As NASA works toward the establishment of a lunar outpost, NASA shall make no plans that would require a lunar outpost to be occupied to maintain its viability. Any such outpost shall be operable as a human-tended facility capable of remote or autonomous operation for extended periods."

Reports that NASA, "instead of building a permanent lunar base, may instead send astronauts on short sorties, or excursions," are more than a year overdue.

This language was included in original mark-up language in the House sub-committee when the U.S. House started the ball rolling on the President's budget request for NASA 11 months ago.

Added in committee, passed by both House and Senate and signed by the President, this must be one of the most under-reported stories of 2008, with regard to national space policy.

The United States formally instructed NASA to plan for an eventual Lunar outpost that could remain unmanned, for indeterminate periods of time last year, just as Scolese alluded to in his testimony April 29.

Only writers living outside the context of present long-term space policy could accuse Scolese or NASA Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Doug Cooke, of providing "vague answers" to questions from congressional committee Members.

Further, nothing in this section of NASA's budget (federal law, 42 U.S. Code 17732) was later changed in President Barack Obama's supplemental "stimulus" budget package (Public Law 111-5) signed into law February 5.

The clarifying changes made to NASA's long-term manned exploration strategy last year, eliminating design planning for a permanently manned lunar outpost appears to be one of the most fundamentally under-reported stories of 2008.

For example, almost nowhere will you find the following, which like the sentence above, also appeared in the earliest mark-ups of this year's operating budget for NASA:

(b) DESIGNATION.—The United States portion of the first human-tended outpost established on the surface of the Moon shall be designated the ‘‘Neil A. Armstrong Lunar Outpost’’.

Or the following, understood in context and as context, could explain some of awards NASA made in support of ISS re-supply missions a few weeks later:

(c) SENSE OF CONGRESS.—It is the sense of Congress that NASA should make use of commercial services to the maximum extent practicable in support of its lunar outpost activities.

Reporters who want to decypher happenings within NASA should remember, under the law, the agency is very much "a creature of Congress." Presidents come and go, but Congress has the power of the purse, most especially the U.S. House of Representatives, where all spending plans must begin.

NASA press briefing on Ares 1 questions on Thursday

An oscillation and vibration problem thought to be inherent in the design of the Ares 1 booster, scheduled for full weight testing next year, is "fixable," according to reports. NASA will conduct a press "teleconference" briefing on Ares 1's "tiger team" findings, at 1630 UT, Thursday, April 3.

According to Aviation Weekly:

"Scott (Doc) Horowitz, a four-time shuttle veteran who later headed NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate as Ares I development was getting under way, said March 28 that the tiger team assembled to address the problem has found it tractable in a way that shouldn't impede the Ares I preliminary design review coming up this summer.

"Early estimates of the scope of the problem were overly conservative," Horowitz said. "Instead of threatening the health of the crew and damage to some vehicle hardware, the actual vibration levels generated as the solid-fuel first stage burns out can be handled with relatively straightforward mechanical fixes."

"You can mitigate this throughout the whole vehicle," Horowitz said. "You can do it on the top of the first stage. You can do it on the interstage. You can do it by the orientation of the tanks. When you get up to the CEV and service module, then you can put shock absorbers in the seats."

Horowitz, now an independent aerospace consultant whose clients include ATK, the Ares I first-stage contractor, and a "greybeard" advisor to NASA through the NASA Engineering and Safety Center, served on the tiger team that reviewed the thrust oscillation issue after it arose last fall.

Garry M. Lyles, the senior NASA engineer who headed that review panel, is scheduled to brief Congress on his findings" this week.

Concerns raised recently about the design for the rocket planned for launching NASA's next manned space vehicle and successor Orion were raised about whether the vehicle's design may not withstand vibrations Shuttle astronauts have come expect when the Solid Fuel Booster first stage of the Ares 1 design burns out and may be easily mitigated, by small changes throughout the vehicle.

NASA's announced Monday Thursday's teleconference participants will, "discuss findings from the Ares I thrust oscillation focus (tiger) team. The team has been studying possible vibration concerns in the early designs of the new crew launch vehicle NASA is designing as part of the Constellation Program."

Participants at the Ares 1 teleconference are expected to include Rick Gilbrech, associate administrator, Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington; Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator, Exploration Systems Mission Directorate; Steve Cook, manager, Ares Projects, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville and Garry Lyles, associate director for technical management, also at Marshall.

The teleconference also will be audiocast live at http://www.nasa.gov/audiocast begining at 1630 UT, Thursday, April 3.

Teamwork credited with Ares I-X launch

NASA's Constellation program's Ares I-X test rocket roars off Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center [NASA/Jim Grossmann].

Outstanding teamwork was the theme of the Ares I-X postlaunch news conference as the successful flight test was discussed.

"I can't say enough about this team," said Doug Cooke, associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "They've been together probably a little over three years now, and they went from a concept to flying this vehicle in that period of time, which is the first time this has been done by a human spaceflight team in a long time."

Referring to the weather, which was the only issue of the day, Constellation Program Manager Jeff Hanley said, "We were ready when Mother Nature was ready, and we took our opportunity and what a great outcome. We're very proud of the result."

"It was a spectacular day," said Bob Ess, Ares I-X mission manager. "The vehicle flew even better than we expected."

"It is just a fantastic day," said Launch Director Ed Mango. "The team really excelled. I can't say enough about the folks who worked together to go make this thing happen. It was a great team, and as you can tell, it was a great vehicle."

NASA's Ares I-X test rocket lifted off at 11:30 a.m. EDT Wednesday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a two-minute powered flight. The flight test lasted about six minutes from its launch from the newly modified Launch Pad 39B until splashdown of the rocket's booster stage nearly 150 miles downrange.

NASA TO brief on lunar exploration plans

WASHINGTON -- NASA is inviting interested industry representatives, academics and reporters to learn more about the Ares V heavy lift-launch vehicle, the Altair lunar lander, and the roles they will play in returning humans to the moon by 2020.

The Exploration Systems Mission Directorate forum will take place Thursday, Sept. 25, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. EDT, at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 1615 H Street NW, Washington.

The forum will focus on the first phase conceptual designs for the Ares V heavy lift-launch vehicle, the Altair lunar lander and lunar exploration scenarios. Forum attendees will discuss the outcomes of a nine-month lunar transportation capabilities study and near-term business opportunities.

Participants from NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate include Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator for the directorate, Geoff Yoder, director of the Directorate Integration Office, and Jeff Hanley, manager of NASA's Constellation Program.

Representatives of industry and academia interested in attending the forum must register online. Attendance is limited and registration will close at 5 p.m. EDT, Sept. 23. Registration and additional information, including an agenda, are available at:

http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/esmd/home/lunar_id.html

Reporters planning to attend must contact Stephanie Schierholz at 202-358-4997 or Grey Hautaluoma at 202-358-0688 by 5 p.m., Sept. 24.

The Ares V rocket and Altair lunar lander are part of a fleet of vehicles that NASA's Constellation Program is developing for a new space transportation system designed to travel beyond low Earth orbit. The Constellation fleet also includes the Orion crew exploration vehicle and the Ares I launch vehicle. NASA plans to establish a human outpost on the moon through a successive series of lunar missions beginning in 2020.

For more information about NASA's Constellation Program, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/constellation

-------------------- Hat tip to
Dr. Clive R. Neal
Department of Civil Engineering & Geological Sciences
156 Fitzpatrick Hall
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA

Tel. 574-631-8328
Fax. 574-631-9236

http://www.nd.edu/~cneal

LRO transitions from exploration to science

Images of the Apollo 11 landing site from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter clearly show the descent stage, the footprints of Armstrong & Aldrin and various equipment they deployed in July 1969 (including Buzz Aldrin's brief stroll to the edge of the crater east of the lunar module Eagle. Beyond the usefulness to science, LRO's first images of all six manned landing sites provide a poignant reminder of the manned lunar exploration legacy of the United States. Before the close-orbiting precision supporting the LRO Narrow Angle Camera operated by Arizona State University, this clear evidence of human activity on the Moon remained just beyond the camera resolutions of unmanned cameras in the decades since the Apollo orbital mapping cameras. At less than one half meter per pixel resolution, the LROC NAC clearly reveal not simply the LM descent stages of the six Apollo mission but lunar rover tracks and the foot paths of the twelve astronauts who explored the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972 [NASA/GSFC/ASU].

Michael Braukus
NASA HQ

Nancy Neal Jones
NASA GSFC

The United States' Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) will complete the exploration phase of its mission on September 16, after a series of successes that added to the transformation of our understanding of Earth's nearest neighbor.

LRO completed a year-long exploration mission in a nearly circular polar orbit approximately 54 kilometers above the Moon's surface, comprehensively mapping the lunar surface in unprecedented detail, searching for resources and safe landing sites and measuring surface temperatures and radiation levels.

LRO's attentions will now turn from exploration objectives to scientific research as program management moves from NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) to the Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

"LRO has been an outstanding success," said Doug Cooke, associate administrator of the ESMD. "The spacecraft has performed brilliantly, and LRO science and engineering teams achieved all mission's objectives. The incredible data LRO gathered will provide discoveries about the moon for years to come."

LRO teams operating its instruments will continue forwarding data gathered during the last year to the Planetary Data System (PDS), which archives and distributes scientific information from NASA planetary missions, astronomical observations and laboratory measurements.

Thirty-five meter boulder among a sea of detail previously unseen in the two Constellation Regions of Interest on the Moon's Aristarchus Plateau. From LROC principal investigator Mark Robinson's report to the Third Annual NASA Lunar Science Institute Conference (Presentation - 17.5 mg PDF) [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

By the time LRO achieves full mission success in March 2011, with data processed and released to the scientific community, it will have sent more information to the Planetary Data System than all previous planetary missions combined.

During its new phase of discovery, LRO will continue to map the moon for two to four more years.

"The official start of LRO's science phase should write a new and intriguing chapter in lunar research," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate.

LRO was launched from Kennedy Space Center carrying a suite of seven instruments, June 18, 2009. After an initial Commissioning phase, LRO formally began a highly detailed survey of the Moon the following September.

Among results collected thus far from the mission are original observations of the Apollo landing sites; indications that permanently shadowed and nearby regions harbor water and hydrogen and other volatiles; observations that large areas in the permanently shadowed regions are colder than anywhere in the Solar System; detailed information about lunar terrain, and the first evidence of a globally distributed population of thrust faults, evidence the Moon has recently contracted and may still be shrinking.

Among other achievements, LRO captured high resolution pictures of Lunokhod 1, the first robotic lunar rover the Soviet Union used to explore withing Mare Imbrium in 1970, subsequently lost for nearly 40 years.

The rover was located to within 30 meters using the LROC Narrow Angle Camera, and this highly accurate position data enabled researchers to captured laser light bounced and clearly reflected back again from the French-built retro-reflector situated on the dormant Soviet lunar rover for the first time. This addition to the long incomplete laser reflector array left on the Moon by the U.S. and U.S.S.R. during the Apollo era should finally enable a precision in Earth-Moon distance measurements to within 3 cm, a target some cosmologists hope will aid in answering questions about "locality" of physical laws in the universe.

LRO also supported the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) impact, as the companion mission was sued to determined if the Moon's permanently shadowed craters harbor water ice, to select the Cabeus crater impact site and to observe the wispy fast expanding plume and to study an evolving temperature at the site soon after the LCROSS impact last October 9.

The previously eternally elusive comprehensive details of the "permanently darkened regions" inside and around the Moon's south pole, situated on the rim of 10 km-wide Shackleton crater. Though aspects of Shackleton interior were first unveiled by Japan's SELENE-1 (Kaguya), the suite of instruments on LRO are singularly equipped to eventually detail the entire Moon's surface, whether by Sun or starlight [Maria Zuber/NLSI/LOLA].

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Maryland built and will continue to manage LRO for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate.

Michael Braukus - michael.j.braukus@nasa.gov
Nancy Neal Jones - nancy.n.jones@nasa.gov

LCROSS science briefing Friday

Cabeus (84.9°S, 324.5E) and it's permanent-endarkened interior, whose mysteries were plumbed by LCROSS, Oct. 9. Despite shallow reporting (long since moved on) of a "dud" after an attempt by NASA to "bomb" the Moon, rumors abound of a strange brew whiffed in the resulting plume, including a hint of Mercury. [JAXA/SELENE Terrain Camera].

NASA will hold a news conference Friday to talk about early science results from its successful moon impacting mission, the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). The satellite gained worldwide attention when it plunged into a crater near the moon's south pole on Oct. 9.

The briefing from NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., will begin at 1700 UT, Friday, November 13, broadcast live on NASA TV and the agency's Web site.

For NASA-TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit HERE.

Panelists include Doug Cooke, associate administrator of the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist for Exploration Systems at NASA Headquarters, Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator from NASA-Ames Research Center, and Greg Delory, senior fellow, Space Sciences Laboratory and Center for Integrative Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley

For information about the LCROSS mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/lcross

Enhanced Radar of Lunar South Pole

Media Briefing - Goldstone Radar Images Released - Topography and elevation revealed
throughout libration (800k Quicktime mov)

Denver NASA has obtained the highest resolution terrain mapping to date of the moon’s rugged south polar region. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., generated the imagery using data collected with the facility's Goldstone Solar System Radar.

Panelists for the Feb. 27 media briefing were: --Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator, Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington; --Scott Hensley, principal investigator, Lunar Image Team, JPL; --Kelly Snook, lunar program scientist, NASA Ames; --Eric De Jong, principal investigator, Solar System Visualization Project, JPL

Images / Animations
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/mmb/022708.html

› Play animation (Quicktime - 827Kb) Libration Movie

› Play animation (Quicktime - 1.6Mb) Lunar Illumination Movie

› Play animation (Quicktime - 739Kb) South Pole Flyover Animation

› Play animation (Quicktime - 2.7Mb) Lunar Landing Animation

NASA to Release Enhanced Radar Imagery of Lunar South Pole

NASA scientists have obtained the highest resolution terrain mapping to date of the moon's rugged south polar region and will discuss the imagery Wednesday, Feb. 27, at the 3rd Space Exploration Conference in Denver.

Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., generated the imagery using data collected with the facility's Goldstone Solar System Radar. The news media briefing is scheduled for noon MST in Room 506 of the Colorado Convention Center.

Panelists for the briefing are:

-- Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator, Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington
-- Scott Hensley, principal investigator, Lunar Image Team, JPL
-- Eric de Jong, principal investigator, Solar System Visualization, JPL

For reporters who are unable to attend, a call-in line will be available. Call-in information is available by contacting Stephanie Schierholz at 202-834-0548.

At noon MST on Feb. 27, terrain maps of the moon's south pole and other images will be available online at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/mmb/022708.html

NASA to brief on Lunar Architecture

Washington -- NASA is inviting interested industry representatives, academics and reporters to learn more about the Ares V heavy lift-launch vehicle, the Altair lunar lander, and the roles they will play in returning humans to the moon by 2020.

The Exploration Systems Mission Directorate forum will take place Thursday, Sept. 25, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. EDT, at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 1615 H Street NW, Washington. The forum will focus on the first phase conceptual designs for the Ares V heavy lift-launch vehicle, the Altair lunar lander and lunar exploration scenarios. Forum attendees will discuss the outcomes of a nine-month lunar transportation capabilities study and near-term business opportunities.

Participants from NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate include Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator for the directorate, Geoff Yoder, director of the Directorate Integration Office, and Jeff Hanley, manager of NASA's Constellation Program. Representatives of industry and academia interested in attending the forum must register online. Attendance is limited and registration will close at 5 p.m. EDT, Sept. 23. Registration and additional information, including an agenda, are available at:

http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/esmd/home/lunar_id.html

Reporters planning to attend must contact Stephanie Schierholz at 202-358-4997 or Grey Hautaluoma at 202-358-0688 by 5 p.m., Sept. 24.

The Ares V rocket and Altair lunar lander are part of a fleet of vehicles that NASA's Constellation Program is developing for a new space transportation system designed to travel beyond low Earth orbit. The Constellation fleet also includes the Orion crew exploration vehicle and the Ares I launch vehicle. NASA plans to establish a human outpost on the moon through a successive series of lunar missions beginning in 2020.

For more information about NASA's Constellation Program, visit

http://www.nasa.gov/constellation

Stephanie Schierholz/Grey Hautaluoma
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-4997/0668
stephanie.schierholz@nasa.gov, grey.hautaluoma-1@nasa.gov

Lynnette Madison/Josh Byerly
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
lynnette.b.madison@nasa.gov, bill.j.byerly@nasa.gov

NASA details plans for precursor lunar exploration robotic missions

Michael Mewhinney /Jonas Dino
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-3937/5612
Michael.S.Mewhinney@nasa.gov / Jonas.Dino@nasa.gov

MOFFETT FIELD, CA (NASA Ames) ­ NASA's return to the moon will get a boost in June with the launch of two satellites that will return a wealth of data about Earth's nearest neighbor. On Thursday, the agency outlined the upcoming missions of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). The spacecraft will launch together June 17 aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Using a suite of seven instruments, LRO will help identify safe landing sites for future human explorers, locate potential resources, characterize the radiation environment and test new technology. LCROSS will seek a definitive answer about the presence of water ice at the lunar poles. LCROSS will use the spent second stage Atlas Centaur rocket in an unprecedented way that will culminate with two spectacular impacts on the moon's surface.

"These two missions will provide exciting new information about the moon, our nearest neighbor," said Doug Cooke, associate administrator of NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington. "Imaging will show dramatic landscapes and areas of interest down to one-meter resolution. The data also will provide information about potential new uses of the moon. These teams have done a tremendous job designing and building these two spacecraft."

LRO's instruments will help scientists compile high resolution, three-dimensional maps of the lunar surface and also survey it in the far ultraviolet spectrum. The satellite's instruments will help explain how the lunar radiation environment may affect humans and measure radiation absorption with a plastic that is like human tissue.

LRO's instruments also will allow scientists to explore the moon's deepest craters, look beneath its surface for clues to the location of water ice, and identify and explore both permanently lit and permanently shadowed regions. High resolution imagery from its camera will help identify landing sites and characterize the moon's topography and composition. A miniaturized radar will image the poles and test the system's communications capabilities.

"LRO is an amazingly sophisticated spacecraft," said Craig Tooley, LRO project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Its suite of instruments will work in concert to send us data in areas where we've been hungry for information for years."

While most Centaurs complete their work after boosting payloads out of Earth's orbit, the LCROSS Centaur will journey with the spacecraft for four months and be guided to an impact in a permanently shadowed crater at one of the moon's poles. The resulting debris plume is expected to rise more than six miles. It presents a dynamic observation target for LCROSS as well as a network of ground-based telescopes, LRO, and possibly the Hubble Space Telescope. Observers will search for evidence of water ice by examining the plume in direct sunlight. LCROSS also will increase knowledge of the mineralogical makeup of some of the remote polar craters that sunlight never reaches. The satellite represents a new generation of fast development, cost capped missions that use flight proven hardware and off the shelf software to achieve focused mission goals.

"We look forward to engaging a wide cross section of the public in LCROSS' spectacular arrival at the moon and search for water ice," said LCROSS Project Manager Dan Andrews of NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. "It's possible we'll learn the answer to what is increasingly one of planetary science's most intriguing questions."

LRO and LCROSS are the first missions launched by the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. Their data will be used to advance goals of future human exploration of the solar system. LRO will spend at least one year in low polar orbit around the moon, collecting detailed information for exploration purposes before being transferred to NASA's Science Mission Directorate to continue collecting additional scientific data.

Goddard manages the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Ames manages the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. LRO is a NASA mission with international participation from the Institute for Space Research in Moscow. Russia provides the neutron detector aboard the spacecraft. Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, Calif., built the LCROSS spacecraft.

NASA Briefing LRO/LCROSS Thursday

NASA will host a presser, Thursday regarding the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar CRater Remote Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) now scheduled for launch no earlier than June 17.

Members of the mission and science teams will brief reporters May 21 at 2300 UT in the James E. Webb Memorial Auditorium at NASA HQ in Washington. It will be carried live on NASA TV.

"Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, focuses on the selection of safe landing sites, identification of lunar resources," the announcement reads, "and the study of how lunar radiation will affect humans."

And "the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, will impact the moon twice in its search for water ice."

Briefing participants are Doug Cooke, associate administrator, Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters; Mike Wargo, chief lunar scientist, Exploration Systems Mission Directorate; Craig Tooley, project manager, LRO, NASA Goddard; Rich Vondrak, project scientist, LRO, Goddard; Dan Andrews, project manager, LCROSS, NASA Ames; Tony Colaprete, project scientist, LCROSS, Ames.