spacetoday.net: LADEE to end mission this month

Posted: Tue, Apr 8, 2014, 6:39 AM ET (1039 GMT)
LADEE illustration (NASA)

A NASA spacecraft orbiting the Moon since last fall will end its mission later this month by crashing to the lunar surface, NASA officials said Thursday. The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft will gradually lower its orbit over the next few weeks before impacting the lunar surface on or before April 21. The spacecraft, launched in September and in lunar orbit since early October, has been studying the Moon's extremely tenuous atmosphere and dust environment, completing its 100-day prime mission earlier this year. Because of uncertainties in the orbit, spacecraft controllers have not selected a specific impact site on the lunar surface. A complicating factor in the final phase of the spacecraft's mission is a lunar eclipse on April 15 that will keep the spacecraft in shadow for four hours, putting the spacecraft at the limits of conditions it was designed to operate in.