NASA managers have agreed to push back the anxiously anticipated launch of the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter (LRO) & LCROSS joint mission payload until a set of 18 favorable launch windows open at the end of February entending through March 2009. Unofficially, Lockheed-Boeing launch contractors at KSC were under the from the U.S. Air Force for an equally unofficial launch window for the unofficial X-37 advanced Orbiter, overlapping with LRO-LCROSS.
The polar LOI will only alter LRO's long-term mission's timetable, but may require some fast thinking by LCROSS mission planners. The LCROSS impactor, long in preparation to repeat the 1999 last act of the tiny, mighty Lunar Prospector, hoping to succeed where that first polar crash landing failed, in actually scaring up a Deep Impact-class fountain of kenetic debris that robotic and human observers can then scan to see if aeons-old super ice will be instantly turned into steam.
The geometry of the mission may require the choice of another polar cold trap.
