News and Events
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Walls of Lunar Crater May Hold Patchy Ice, LRO Radar Finds
Scientists using the Mini-RF radar on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have estimated the maximum amount of ice likely to be found inside a permanently shadowed lunar crater located near the moon's South Pole. As much as five to ten percent of material, by weight, could be patchy ice, according to the team of researchers led by Bradley Thomson at Boston University's Center for Remote Sensing.
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Mini-RF Operations on Hold
Science operations for the Mini-RF radar on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter are on hold now that the instrument is not transmitting sufficient energy to image the moon’s surface. The mission team continues to gather and analyze data in an attempt to determine the cause of the fault and whether it is recoverable.
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Your Time to Explore (part 2)
Check out this second podcast to learn more about how Mini-RF is searching for ice on the Moon.
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Your Time to Explore
Check out this new podcast to learn how Mini-RF is searching for ice on the Moon.
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NASA And ISRO Satellites Perform In Tandem To Search For Ice On The Moon
NASA and ISRO will attempt a novel joint experiment that could yield more information on whether ice exists in a permanently shadowed crater near the north pole of the moon.
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NASA Radar Tandem Searches For Ice On The Moon
With the Mini-RF instrument flying aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, the space agency now has two powerful tools searching for ice on the moon.
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NASA Returning to the Moon with First Lunar Launch in a Decade
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launched at 5:32 p.m. EDT Thursday aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The satellite will relay more information about the lunar environment than any other previous mission to the moon.
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Mini-SAR Nears Completion of First Mapping Cycle
The Mini-SAR imaging radar aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter has been sending back some amazing images for the last couple of months. With the mission's first radar mapping season nearing an end, scientists are looking at and evaluating the data in hand. Read a first-hand account from Instrument Principal Investigator Paul Spudis.
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First Look Inside Moon's Shadowed Craters
Using a NASA radar flying aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists are getting their first look inside the moon's coldest, darkest craters.
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Chandrayaan-1 Carries Out First Orbit-Reduction Maneuver →
The Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft successfully performed a maneuver to adjust its orbit around the moon on Nov. 9.
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India Aims for the Moon →
A U.S. scientist reports from the scene of India's first lunar launch.
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NASA Returns to the Moon with Instruments on Indian Spacecraft
Two NASA instruments to map the lunar surface will launch on India's maiden moon voyage. The Moon Mineralogy Mapper will assess mineral resources, and the Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar, or Mini-SAR, will map the polar regions and look for ice deposits.
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Mini-RF Instrument to Orbit the Moon
The Mini-RF payloads are technology demonstration experiments designed to survey the permanently-shadowed regions on the lunar poles. The first instrument, Mini-SAR, is a synthetic aperture radar and is scheduled for launch on October 22 on the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chandrayaan-1 mission.
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NASA Tests Moon Imaging Spacecraft at Goddard
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has completed the first round of environmental testing at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
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The LRO/LCROSS Flight to the Moon
How to plan for a moon mission 101.