NASA LADEE Mission ends with planned lunar impact

Ground controllers at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., have confirmed that NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft impacted the surface of the moon, as planned, between 9:30 and 10:22 p.m. PDT Thursday, April 17.

LADEE lacked fuel to maintain a long-term lunar orbit or continue science operations and was intentionally sent into the lunar surface. The spacecraft's orbit naturally decayed following the mission's final low-altitude science phase.

During impact, engineers believe the LADEE spacecraft, the size of a vending machine, broke apart, with most of the spacecraft's material heating up several hundred degrees – or even vaporizing – at the surface. Any material that remained is likely buried in shallow craters.

"At the time of impact, LADEE was traveling at a speed of 3,600 miles per hour – about three times the speed of a high-powered rifle bullet," said Rick Elphic, LADEE project scientist at Ames.

"There's nothing gentle about impact at these speeds – it's just a question of whether LADEE made a localized craterlet on a hillside or scattered debris across a flat area. It will be interesting to see what kind of feature LADEE has created."

In early April, the spacecraft was commanded to carry out maneuvers that would lower its closest approach to the lunar surface.

The new orbit brought LADEE to altitudes below one mile (two kilometers) above the lunar surface.

This is lower than most commercial airliners fly above Earth, enabling scientists to gather unprecedented science measurements.

On April 11, LADEE performed a final maneuver to ensure a trajectory that caused the spacecraft to impact the far side of the moon, which is not in view of Earth or near any previous lunar mission landings.

"It's bittersweet knowing we have received the final transmission from the LADEE spacecraft after spending years building it in-house at Ames, and then being in constant contact as it circled the moon for the last several months," said Butler Hine, LADEE project manager at Ames.

Launched in September 2013 from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, LADEE began orbiting the moon Oct. 6 and gathering science data Nov. 10.

The spacecraft entered its science orbit around the moon's equator on Nov. 20, and in March 2014, LADEE extended its mission operations following a highly successful 100-day primary science phase.

Spanish MODIS Astronomers observe record-breaking lunar impact in Mare Nubium

An image of the flash resulting from the impact of a large meteorite on the lunar surface on 11 September 2013, obtained with the ESO MIDAS observatory. 

Credit: J. Madiedo / MIDAS

A meteorite with the mass of a small car crashed into the Moon last September, according to Spanish astronomers.

The impact, the biggest seen to date, produced a bright flash and would have been easy to spot from the Earth.

The scientists publish their description of the event in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Moon lacks the atmosphere that prevents small rocks from space from reaching the surface of the Earth.

The result is very visible – vast numbers of craters large and small cover the whole of our nearest neighbour and record 4.5 billion years of collisions that span the history of the Solar system.

Although there is almost no chance of a very large object striking the Moon or planets, collisions with smaller objects are very common even today.

The odds of seeing one of these by chance are pretty poor, so scientists have set up networks of telescopes that can detect them automatically.

Jose M. Madiedo

On 11 September 2013, Prof Jose M. Madiedo was operating two telescopes in the south of Spain that were searching for these impact events.

At 2007 GMT he witnessed an unusually long and bright flash in Mare Nubium, an ancient lava-filled basin with a darker appearance than its surroundings.

The flash was the result of a rock crashing into the lunar surface and was briefly almost as bright as the familiar Pole Star, meaning that anyone on Earth who was lucky enough to be looking at the Moon at that moment would have been able to see it.

In the video recording made by Prof Madiedo, an afterglow remained visible for a further eight seconds.



The October event is the longest and brightest confirmed impact flash ever observed on the Moon. Prof Madiedo recalls how impressed he was: "At that moment I realised that I had seen a very rare and extraordinary event."

The Spanish telescopes are part of the Moon Impacts Detection and Analysis System (MIDAS) system that monitors the lunar surface.

Jose L. Ortiz

This project is being undertaken by Prof Jose Maria Madiedo, from the University of Huelva (UHU), and by Dr Jose L. Ortiz, from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) and continues a pioneering program that detected sporadic lunar impact flashes for the first time.

Since these impacts take place at huge speeds, the rocks become molten and are vapourised at the impact site instantaneously, and this produces a thermal glow that can be detected from our planet as short-duration flashes through telescopes.

Generally, these flashes last just a fraction of a second but the flash detected on 11 September was much more intense and longer than anything observed before.

More Information: “A large lunar impact blast on 2013 September 11”, José M. Madiedo, José L. Ortiz, Nicolás Morales and Jesús Cabrera-Caño, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Oxford University Press, in press. A copy of the paper is available from mnras.oxfordjournals.org