Topic: Lunar Orbit

NASA Lunar Lander Thrusters hold up to Over 60 Hot-Fire Tests

March 25, 2020 |

Huntsville, AL – Future NASA Artemis lunar landers could use next-generation thrusters, the small rocket engines used to make alterations in a spacecraft’s flight path or altitude, to enter lunar orbit and descend to the surface. Before the engines make the trip to the Moon, helping deliver new science instruments and technology demonstrations, they’re being tested here on Earth.

NASA and Frontier Aerospace of Simi Valley, California, performed roughly 60 hot-fire tests on two thruster prototypes over the course of 10 days.

NASA and Frontier Aerospace are developing next-generation thrusters for use on Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander. In March 2020, thruster prototypes performed over 60 hot-fire tests in a vacuum chamber. (Frontier Aerospace)

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NASA is looking for ways to Target an Asteroid

April 17, 2013 |

Written by DC Agle
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Like many of his colleagues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, Shyam Bhaskaran is working a lot with asteroids these days. And also like many of his colleagues, the deep space navigator devotes a great deal of time to crafting, and contemplating, computer-generated 3-D models of these intriguing nomads of the solar system.

But while many of his coworkers are calculating asteroids’ past, present and future locations in the cosmos, zapping them with the world’s most massive radar dishes, or considering how to rendezvous and perhaps even gently nudge an asteroid into lunar orbit, Bhaskaran thinks about how to collide with one.

This spectacular image of comet Tempel 1 was taken 67 seconds after it obliterated Deep Impact’s impactor spacecraft. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD)

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NASA plans to capture an Asteroid robotically and bring it back to a safe Lunar Orbit for Exploration

April 11, 2013 |

Written by DC Agle
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Washington, D.C. – The following are statements from the associate administrators of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, Science Mission Directorate and Space Technology Mission Directorate on the administration’s budget request for the 2014 fiscal year.

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NASA’s ARTEMIS mission reveals the Moon’s effect on the Solar Wind

May 31, 2012 |

Written by Bill Steigerwald
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – With the moon as the most prominent object in the night sky and a major source of an invisible pull that creates ocean tides, many ancient cultures thought it could also affect our health or state of mind – the word “lunacy” has its origin in this belief.

Now, a powerful combination of spacecraft and computer simulations is revealing that the moon does indeed have a far-reaching, invisible influence – not on us, but on the Sun, or more specifically, the solar wind.

This is a view of the moon transiting, or passing in front of, the Sun as seen from the STEREO-B spacecraft on Feb. 25th, 2007. The Sun is in false color, and the moon appears as a black disk on the upper right. NASA's STEREO mission consists of two spacecraft launched in October, 2006 to study solar storms. (Credit: NASA)

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NASA’s GRAIL Spacecraft fly in Formation around the Moon at 3,600 MPH

March 28, 2012 |

Written by DC Agle
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – The act of two or more aircraft flying together in a disciplined, synchronized manner is one of the cornerstones of military aviation, as well as just about any organized air show. But as amazing as the U.S. Navy’s elite Blue Angels or the U.S. Air Force’s Thunderbirds are to behold, they remain essentially landlocked, anchored if you will, to our planet and its tenuous atmosphere. What if you could take the level of precision of these great aviators to, say, the moon?

An artist's depiction of the GRAIL twins (Ebb and Flow) in lunar orbit. During GRAIL's prime mission science phase, the two spacecraft will orbit the moon as high as 31 miles (51 kilometers) and as low as 10 miles (16 kilometers). (Image credit: NASA/Caltech-JPL/MIT)

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