Science and Exploration

Where is LCROSS Now?

By Keith Cowing
May 24, 2013
Filed under

Jun 24 at 3:53 PM PDT (DOY 175 UTC 22:53) You are seeing the Earth/Moon system. LCROSS’s orbit is the one tilted out of the plane. At the above time, the icon of LCROSS shows LCROSS’s position. This is post-lunar swingby. Lunar swingby was at the inflection of LCROSS’s orbit and you can see the Moon has moved on since then. At this time, LCROSS was about 130,000 km from the Moon and 378,000 km from the Earth.

Jun 24 at 3:53 PM PDT (DOY 175 UTC 22:53) You are seeing the Earth/Moon system. LCROSS’s orbit is the one tilted out of the plane. At the above time, the icon of LCROSS shows LCROSS’s position. This is post-lunar swingby. Lunar swingby was at the inflection of LCROSS’s orbit and you can see the Moon has moved on since then. At this time, LCROSS was about 130,000 km from the Moon and 378,000 km from the Earth.

SpaceRef co-founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.