NEWS
The Lunar Prospector Mission
A Success!
The NASA/Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA invites you and the world to look at the events surrounding the first NASA Moon mission in 25 years!
"Lunar Prospector
has given us
new eyes to look at the solar system"
Results from First Six Months.
For details see
Results
After a year and a half of ground breaking
science, Lunar Prospector took a bold step towards furthering its science
legacy by intentionally impacting a targeted south polar crater of the
Moon.
For details see Lunar
Prospector Impact Page
The Case of the Missing Moon Water: Lunar Prospector
failed to kick up a visible dust cloud when it crashed into the Moon,
but that doesn't mean it failed to strike water. Astronomers are still
sifting through their data for elusive signatures of a tenuous water vapor
cloud that may have resulted from the crash. FULL STORY at
NASA
Space Science News for September 3, 1999
No Water Ice Detected from Lunar Prospector Impact
The controlled crash of NASA's Lunar Prospector spacecraft
into a crater on the Moon on July 31 produced no observable signature
of water. Scientists digging through data from Earth-based observatories
and spacecraft such as the Hubble Space Telescope made this announcement
today. NASA worked with engineers and astronomers at the University of
Texas to precisely crash the barrel-shaped spacecraft into a specific
shadowed crater as a low-budget attempt to wring one last bit of scientific
productivity from the low-cost Lunar Prospector mission. The question
of whether there is hidden ice on the Moon, delivered by impacting comets,
is still open. (Full
Story)
(10/13/99)
See also
write up at University of Texas
Space Law Issues
Now that there is more interest in the Moon we will have to be looking at the legalities of our space efforts. Take a look at COPUOS . The Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space was set up by the General Assembly in 1959 (resolution 1472 (XIV)) to review the scope of international cooperation in peaceful uses of outer space, to devise programmes in this field to be undertaken under United Nations auspices, to encourage continued research and the dissemination of information on outer space matters, and to study legal problems arising from the exploration of outer space.
See also Space
Law
And here Lunar
Ice
What does it take to get to the Moon?
The following files require Acrobat Reader to view. Get Acrobat Reader.
See LUNAR PROSPECTOR MISSION DESIGN AND TRAJECTORY SUPPORT.
AAS98-323.pdf (387kb PDF file)
The complete Status Report archive in an Adobe Acrobat Reader PDF file.
LPStatus.pdf (255 kb PDF file)
LUNAR PROSPECTOR End of Mission & Overview Press
Kit
( 550 kb PDF file)
Other Issues of Interest
Lunar Data Support Idea That Collision Split Earth, Moon
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