LAMP Observes GRAIL Impact
- Visualizations by:
- Ernie Wright
- View full credits
This animation shows the relative positions of GRAIL and LRO at the time of the impact, as well as the view from LAMP as it scanned for the dust plume. The LAMP sensor is a 6.0° x 0.3° slit that was positioned to look over the limb of the Moon, so that it would be pointed into the tenuous dust plume with only the sky in the background. This observation was possible, in part, because GRAIL impacted on the night side of the Moon, where there was no concern that LAMP's sensitive detector could be blinded by sunlit terrain. From Earth, the Moon was a waxing crescent at the time of the impact.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Animator
- Ernie Wright (USRA) [Lead]
Scientists
- John Keller (NASA/GSFC)
- Kurt Retherford (SwRI)
Producer
- Dan Gallagher (KBRwyle)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
U.S. Naval Observatory UCAC3 (A.K.A. Catalog) (Collected with the Third CCD Astrograph sensor)
LRO DEM (A.K.A. Digital Elevation Map) (Collected with the LOLA sensor)
SPICE Ephemerides (A.K.A. SPICE Ephemerides)
Satellite and planetary ephemerides
See more visualizations using this data setNote: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.
Related pages
GRAIL Impacts the Moon
Dec. 17, 2012, 4 a.m.
Read moreThe Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission comprises a pair of satellites launched in September, 2011 and placed in orbit around the Moon in January, 2012. The two satellites, named Ebb and Flow, used radio signals to precisely measure their separation as they flew in formation, one following the other in the same nearly circular polar orbit. These measurements allowed mission scientists to build up an accurate and detailed gravity map of the Moon.GRAIL ends its successful mission by impacting the Moon on December 17, 2012 at approximately 5:27 p.m. EST (22:27 UT). The two spacecraft were placed in an orbit that takes them within a kilometer of the surface, so low that they will hit the side of an unnamed mountain that lies between Mouchez and Philolaus craters, near the north pole at 7511 s last orbits across the night side of a waxing crescent Moon. On their penultimate orbit, Ebb and Flow just miss the mountain they will hit on their next pass. A more distant view of the impact site, just seconds before the impact of Ebb.
LAMP Observes the LCROSS Impact
Oct. 21, 2010, 9:55 a.m.
Read moreA two-ton Atlas Centaur rocket body, part of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), struck the floor of Cabeus crater, near the south pole of the moon, at 11:31 UT on October 9, 2009. The purpose of the crash was to create a plume of debris that could be examined for the presence of water and other chemicals in the lunar regolith.The Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) instrument aboard Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) observed the tenuous vapor cloud created by the LCROSS impact. LAMP is LRO s field of view. In this version of the animation, overlays have been added comprising callouts and a graph of the LAMP sensor data that builds up over time.