The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), managed by NASA's Ames Research Center in California, was launched with LRO on June 18, 2009. LCROSS searched for water ice in a permanently shadowed crater near one of the moon's poles. Visit the website below for more information about LCROSS and the crater impact.
NASA ended its successful GRAIL mission by intentionally crashing the twin spacecraft into the moon. Another satellite observed the event.
Scientific observations made by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) are the subject of a special edition of Journal of Geophysical Research Planets.
NASA beamed an image of the Mona Lisa to the LRO spacecraft as part of the first demo of laser communication with a satellite at the moon.
Readings from Apollo 14 and 15 dust detectors have been restored and made available to scientists thanks to work by the National Space Science Data Center at Goddard.