This blog follows the progress of the LRO mission through Integration and Testing at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and launch site processing at KSC\Astrotech. Its purpose is to enable communication to the entire LRO Team about the status of ongoing activities.

LRO was launched June 18th, 2009 at 5:32pm EDT from KSC. This BLOG will follow the progress of the mission as LRO travels to the Moon and establishes orbit around it.

This BLOG will be periodically updated during LRO's early mission but as the nominal mission unfolds the official NASA LRO website and the LRO Science Instrument's own websites will evolve into a more interesting sources of LRO science results as postings appear there first and LRO engineering and operations (source of this site) will become increasingly routine.




Friday, May 1, 2009

Friday, May 1 Activities.


We continue to test the propulsion system. The valves and regulator have been leak tested. More testing over the weekend. We will be getting ready for fueling on Monday.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Second stage stacked!



Cool link to KSC webcams at: http://www.floridatoday.com/content/maps/spacewebcams.shtml

Wed, April 29 Activities

Wednesday, the propulsion team completed the Propellant Tank Pressurization checkout. The tank is pressurized to 350 psig. They had to work around two building clears while LCROSS was stacked onto its flight adapter ring.

The LCROSS hardware is ready for the LRO mate which will happen in about a week and a half.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Tuesday, April 28 Activities.


Today we completed closeout of the LOLA instrument. We removed the Aeronex filter, and performed final blanket closeouts.

We have started to make our final approach to fueling the spacecraft. The propulsion crew spent the day getting their test equipment out and set up. The next several days will be dedicated to performing the final propulsion tests before fueling.

The LRO/LCROSS Atlas booster is out at the Vertical Integration Facility. Tomorrow the Centaur stage will be erected! Its all starting to come together.

"I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface." - Jaron Lanier

Monday, April 27 Activities.

Monday, we ran the Launch Day Aliveness proc again, but in a configuration closer to the launch configuration.

We also took more NAC images to verify a tool the LROC team will use during the mission to establish correct camera settings.

We verified the SAS damper heater operation, which completes all the SAS integration testing.