NASA LADEE Mission: Monitoring Lunar Dust

Artist’s concept of NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft in orbit above the moon as dust scatters light during the lunar sunset. 

Credit: NASA Ames 

In partnership with NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, Calif., Goddard's Wallops Flight Facility will launch the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) in September, a robotic mission that will study the moon's thin atmosphere and dust particles.

Ames manages the 100-day mission—-which will attempt to confirm whether dust caused a mysterious glow on the lunar horizon astronauts observed during several Apollo missions—and Goddard plays a variety of key roles in LADEE.

After launch, Ames will control the spacecraft and execute mission operations. Goddard is responsible for the LADEE launch and several important LADEE components, including the instruments, demonstrations of the mission's payload and science operations.

"We wanted to do a mission that would benefit both centers," LADEE payload manager Robert Caffrey said. "It's a good model for centers working together to achieve common goals."

LADEE's launch in September from Virginia's Eastern Shore marks the facility's first launch to the moon.

Wallops will provide the launch services and range operations as well the launch vehicle, a U.S. Air Force Minotaur V rocket. LADEE will be the first spacecraft to launch on this rocket.

One of Goddard's biggest roles on LADEE is to manage the mission's four instruments and demonstrations. Three of the payload instruments—the Neutral Mass Spectrometer or NMS, Ultraviolet and Visible Light Spectrometer and the Lunar Dust Experiment or LDEX—will study the lunar atmosphere composition and analyze lunar dust.

Developed at Goddard, the NMS will measure variations in the different gases of the lunar atmosphere while the spacecraft orbits the moon. A similar spectrometer will fly aboard the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission, scheduled to launch in November

"The Goddard Neutral Mass Spectrometer team is delighted to provide this instrument to the LADEE mission and contribute to this mission's exploration of the tenuous atmosphere of the moon," said Goddard NMS Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy.

LADEE will also host the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration or LLCD mission payload. LLCD is an innovative laser technology that could one day replace radio waves currently used in satellite communications and is expected to transmit more data at faster rates.