LRO to Perform Bi-Static Radar Experiment with Chandrayaan-1

On Aug. 20, 2009 NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) will attempt a novel joint experiment that could yield more information on whether ice exists in a permanently shadowed crater near the north pole of the moon. Currently the ISRO’s Chandrayaan-1 and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft are orbiting the moon. While LRO is in its commissioning phase the two spacecraft pass close enough to each other when they are over the lunar north pole to attempt a unique experiment. 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. The experiment uses both radars to point at Erlanger Crater at the same time.

Normally the Mini-RF Instrument sends radio pulses to the moon and precisely records the radio echoes that bounce straight back from the surface, along with their timing and frequency. From these data scientists can build images of the moon that not only show areas they otherwise couldn’t see, such as the permanently-shadowed areas near the lunar poles, but also contain information on the physical nature of the surface.
For the Bi-Static experiment the Mini-SAR on Chandrayaan-1 performs its normal SAR imaging (transmitting and receiving) while the Mini-RF is set to receive only. The two instruments look at the same location from different angles. Comparing the signal that bounces straight back to Chandrayaan with the signal that bounces at a slight angle to LRO provides unique information about the surface.

While this coordination sounds easy, this experiment is extremely challenging because both spacecraft are traveling at about 1.6 km per second and will be looking at an area on the ground about 18 km across. Due to the extreme speeds and the small point of interest, NASA and ISRO need to obtain and share information about the location and pointing of both spacecraft. The Bi-Static experiment requires extensive tracking by ground stations of NASA’s Deep Space Network, the Applied Physics Laboratory, and ISRO. In addition LRO will perform a 23 second propulsion burn today to adjust LRO orbit phasing to enable the coordinated observations.

The Mini-RF website will be the place to look for the first results of this experiment. The event is illustrated in the simulation below.

LRO Status

The LRO mission is now well past the halfway point of our commissioning phase during which we have been calibrating and testing the instruments. We now plan to lower our orbit down to the 50 km polar orbit on September 15th, 2009 and start the nominal mission.

We're at the Moon Event Video compilation

Aloha LRO Fans – Check out this awesome video compilation from Saturday’s “We’re at the Moon” Event:

http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010400/a010475/index.html

Many thanks to Andy Freeberg for being videographer extraordinaire!!

Enjoy,
Cathy

An Awesome Weekend for LRO

Above photo is of Fans of LRO lining up to get a glimpse of the Moon and maybe LRO!

Aloha LRO Team! Congratulations to all of us for a totally awesomely successful weekend!

On Saturday night, the “We’re at the Moon” event held at the Goddard Visitor Center was a smashing success!! Many folks came out to celebrate with us and enjoy the LRO Project’s phenomenal success thus far. A Very Special Thank You to our Event Volunteers: Carmel Conaty, Trusilla Steele, Michelle Jones, Lora Bleacher, Heather Weir, Steph Stockman, Frank Ireton, Ron Zellar, Cindy Taylor, Rich Vondrak, Paul Lowman, Mark Beckman, Jan Mcgarry, Leigh Janes, Oscar Hsu, Rick Saylor, Maria Acevedo Rivera, and Nancy Neal Jones.

On Sunday, our LAMP instrument had its First Light. Congrats to our LAMP team!!

Rock on LRO!

Cathy

LRO Status July 18-19, 2009

Above STK images are of the start of the Star Cal and at target

LRO continues to perform very well in its commissioning orbit.

This weekend we performed LEND and LROC NAC Star Calibrations (see below STK images for the start of the Star Cal and at target). Data collection continues for all instruments, except for LAMP. LAMP Phase 2 will begin later this week.

Hope you all have seen and enjoyed LROC’s images of the Apollo Landing sites at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/main/index.html
Or
http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/index.html

Congratulations to our totally awesome LROC team for making history!! Congratulations to all on LRO!!

Cathy

Apollo Images from LRO!

At this site--> http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html The one above is Apollo 14

Congratulations to the LROC Team and the entire LRO Team for making this possible!

First Mini-RF Images!

The first images from Mini-RF, the synthetic aperture radar on LRO, is posted here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Mini-RF/news/radar_tandem_searches.html

LRO Commisioning Orbit

For those interested in such things, LRO"s commissioning orbit remains very stable. The plot shows the phase-plot of the commissioning orbit for 90 days from the July 12th OD solution. The polar plot is Eccentricity (radial) vs Argument of Periapsis (angular). The orbit evolution remains bounded with AoP near 270 (periselene over south pole) and eccentricity is the neighborhood of 0.04. Eccentricity does very throughout each lunar cycle though.