LRO

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Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)

lro-spacecraft.jpg
Credit: NASA

Description

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is a NASA-sponsored mission to image and study selected areas of t e Moon at high resolution. It carries an array of instruments, and was originally conceived to support a now abandoned plan for renewed Moon landings by the United States.

Additional Information

  • Jitter versus Slewed : We recently viewed an LROC image of a possible impact scenario – where the LRO spacecraft was ‘jittered’ (first below) in its observation by an object that may have hit it. However, every now and then, the spacecraft, during its orbiting run, also undergoes orientation – a kind of ‘slewing’ effect (second below), whereby, imagery of the lunar surface results in an odd effect - producing a smeared-like work.. - JohnMoore2jitter.jpg
  • First above: Jitter due to a possible impactor - a meteoroid - striking the left-side, NAC radiator shield associated to one of the two NAC cameras onboard.


  • slewed.jpg
  • Second bove: Slewed a 'smeared-like' effect, due to the LRO camera recording the surface during its manoeuvring process - resulting in some areas being digitally overlaid, over-exposed upon another, that don't really represent the true surface.


  • The current location of the LRO spacecraft can be monitored on the Arizona State University (ASU) website.
  • The best known instrument on LRO is the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), actually a set of three cameras operating in and near the visible range of wavelengths.
  • The Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) instrument uses a laser to sample the Moon's topography at specific points. Synthetic images can be produced from these.
  • Other instruments imaging the Moon from LRO include:
    • DIVINER - creating maps of surface temperature from multi-spectral measurements
      Images below show temperature swaths of a region within Oceanus Procellarum - as taken by the DIVINER instrument onboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft during the 15 June 2011 Total Lunar Eclipse. Each swath was recorded separately as the craft’s orbit progressed from east to west: the last two swaths (on the right in each image) representing recordings before the Eclipse begun; the middle three swaths during the Eclipse; while the remaining two swaths are of those when the Eclipse had finished. Note from the legend in the images below how the surface temperature dropped during the Eclipse (see ”Diviner Observes Cooling During June 15 Total Eclipse”) for more. Credit: Surface images - LROC WAC Global View: 300 degrees East, with annotation - JohnMoore2 Jun 26, 2011
      external image Diviner-temp-eclipse2.jpgexternal image Diviner-temp-eclipse1.jpgClick thumbnails for larger views
    • LAMP - creating images of shadowed regions in far ultraviolet light
    • LEND - a Russian experiment mapping neutrons released by the lunar soils
    • Mini-RF - creating radar maps of the surface (a companion instrument flew on India's Chandrayaan-1)
  • The final instrument, CRaTER monitors the radiation environment in lunar orbit.
  • Comprehensive raw and processed data from all instruments on LRO are being released through NASA's Planetary Data System (PDS) in segments, each covering three months of orbital operations. The first release was made on March 15, 2010. The LRO mission page at JPL node of PDS system has links to data from all instruments.
  • Wikipedia article
  • LRO blog


Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Articles (Posts)

  • All articles (more than 800 posts) are online in the LROC-site's sections IMAGES and NEWS.


The lure of small notebooks

On wednesday the 23th of march 2016, the dedicated explorer and investigator of lunar atlases, moon maps, and gazetteers of named lunar surface formations (Danny Caes) decided to explore the (more than 800) articles which are online in the LROC site (known as posts). The purpose of this exploration is to create a numbered list of the headings of all of those articles, in... a notebook. This notebook is not very large (15 centimeters X 10 centimeters). Each page contains the headings of 35 articles (page 1: numbers 1-35, page 2: numbers 36-70, and so on... until page 26 which contains numbers 876-910).
  Thursday the 31st of march 2016: all posts are now in my little booklet! (there are many "absent" or "empty" posts too, especially beyond 850).
  Strange to say, this is a notebook from a certain labour-union up here in Flanders-Belgium. I use these labour-union notebooks to explore the MOON.
 P.S.:
  An online version of this numbered list could be a very handy tool. After much hesitating I decided to create it. Although my small notebook will always be my personal guide to the many LROC-articles... (the digital version: The LROC notebook).
  The 800-and-more articles (or posts) were written by people involved in the LRO project and the exploration (and investigation) of the LROC's many high resolution photographs. Here's an alphabetic list of these people. I wonder why there's no such list on the LROC-site itself...
 I hope this list is complete!- DannyCaes Mar 29, 2016


List of numbers of "empty" or "absent" posts

2, 12, 62, 75, 190, 197, 198, 215, 254, 405, 505, 535, 589, 606, 614, 646, 654, 670, 673, 697, 721, 725, 729, 735, 749, 786, 809, 812, 816, 824, 826, 832, 834, 838, 842, 846, 849, 850, 857, 858, 859, 875, 876, 878, 881, 884, 886, 888, 897, 904, 905, 906, 907, 918, 922, 923, 926, 930, 940, 946, 954, 955, 961, 965 to 969, 974, 983, 987, 994 to 999, 1001, 1003, 1005... (let's hope these numbers won't be "empty" forever...).

Identity numbers of the LROC-site's contributors, an exploration...

1 Bernard Ray Hawke, (Special LPOD: B. Ray Hawke) (post 972; Mons Hansteen)
  2 Zibi Turtle,
  3 Brent Archinal,
  4 Veronica Bray,
  5 Ross Beyer,
  6 Peter Thomas,
  7 Thomas Giguere,
  8 Carolyn Van Der Bogert,
  9 Lisa Gaddis,
  10 Juergen Oberst,
  11 ?,
  12 Tom Watters,
  13 ?, 14 ?, 15 ?,
  16 Jim Bell,
  17 Maria Banks,
  18 Carmen Salas (only on the NEWS section),
  19 Steven Koeber (only on the NEWS section),
  20 Shane Thompson (only on the NEWS section),
  21 Prasun Mahanti (only on the NEWS section),
  22 Zach Gates (only on the NEWS section),
  23 Sarah Mattson,
  24 ?,
  25 Eric Eliason,
  26 Brent Garry,
  27 Bashar Rizk,
  28 Ingrid Daubar,
  29 ?,
  30 Sarah Braden,
  31 Lillian Ostrach (Lillian Rose Ostrach?),
  32 Drew Enns,
  33 Mark Robinson,
  34 ?,
  35 Brett Denevi,
  36 Hiroyuki Sato,
  37 Samuel Lawrence, Note: we live in a very strange world, because Google-Images (SAMUEL LAWRENCE) shows a lot of... bedroom furniture. - DannyCaes Apr 6, 2016
  38 J.Stopar,
  39 James Ashley,
  40 Tim Donnelly (only on the NEWS section),
  41 Zack Bowles (only on the NEWS section),
  42 ?,
  43 Christian Alf (only on the NEWS section),
  44 ?,
  45 Nathan Williams,
  46 Jordan Lawver,
  47 ?, 48 ?,
  49 Livio Leonardo Tornabene,
  50 Sandra Wiseman,
  51 Tawny Tran (only on the NEWS section),
  52 Jeff Plescia (the same as Jeffrey Plescia of 60?) (YES!) (thanks Chuck, but... my Mister Spock-esque analytical and logic-seeking cerebral system can't comprehend the existence of two separate identity numbers for one and the same person...). - DannyCaes Apr 3, 2016
  53 Drew Morgan,
  54 ?, 55 ?,
  56 Mike Zanetti,
  57 Ernest Bowman-Cisneros (only on the NEWS section),
  58 Renee French,
  59 H.Meyer,
  60 Jeffrey Plescia (the same as Jeff Plescia of 52?) (YES!) (thanks Chuck, once again... why two different ID-numbers for one person?). - DannyCaes Apr 3, 2016
  61 Ryan Clegg,
  62 Jeff Leland (only on the NEWS section),
  63 Aaron Boyd,
  64 Raquel Nuno,
  65 ?, 66 ?,
  67 Nick Estes,
  68 ?, 69 ?, 70 ?, 71?,
  72 Kristen Paris,
  73 ?, 74 ?
  75 Megan Henriksen,
  76 ?, 77 ?, 78 ?
  79 Rick Hoppe,
  (to be investigated: 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87).
  88 Alfred McEwen,
  (to be investigated: 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, etcetera... etcetera...).

An alphabetic list of the named lunar surface formations described in the (more than 800) articles on the LROC site

Yes, it was time to get another one of those small trade-union notebooks, to start an alphabetic list of the named surface formations mentioned in the LROC's many articles. You might ask: "Why is he doing this?". I do this kind of gazetteer'ish collectionism to keep myself attached to the recent photographic exploration of the moon (the LRO program), and... to add all the links of the LROC's articles in the corresponding alphabetic pages of the MOON-WIKI ! - DannyCaes Apr 15, 2016

Bibliography




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