NASA Ends The Journey Of Its Spacecraft By Crashing It On The Moon
NASA purposely ended the six month journey of its Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) by crashing it on the moon. It might seem a poetic way of biding adieu to a spacecraft but NASA had their reasons. According to NASA, LADEE did not have enough fuel onboard required to maintain a long-term lunar orbit or continue science operations. The manoeuvres to initiate the crash were carried out on April 11. This sent LADEE on a trajectory to the far side of the moon, the side of the moon that is not seen by Earth. The spacecraft which is the size of a vending machine was travelling at a speed of 3600 mph (5793 kph) at the time of impact and once it hit the lunar surface it broke apart. Its makers at the Ames Research Centre in Moffett Field, California are curious to find out about the damage it caused the lunar surface. In the coming months they shall be working with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) team at NASA to pinpoint the exact location of the crash and hopefully obtain a photograph of it.
LADEE had a pretty eventful life. It was launched in September 2013 from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. It began orbiting the moon on October 6th and started collecting scientific data from November 10th. Regular VoiCE readers know about LADEE for its <a href="https://www.crazyengineers.com/threads/from-earth-to-moon-622-mbps-nasa.71348">From Earth To Moon @ 622 Mbps : NASA</a>. This was the first time that NASA opted for a dedicated two-way communication system that used pulsed laser beams instead of conventional radio waves. The LLCD was successfully able to transmit data at speeds were up to 622 Mbps and receive uplink information at speeds up to 20Mbps.
Source: <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/april/nasa-completes-ladee-mission-with-planned-impact-on-moons-surface/#.U1Kt06KftcM" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">NASA Completes LADEE Mission with Planned Impact on Moon's Surface | NASA</a>
