LADEE Launches, Heads For Moon

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NASA Sets Sights on Testing Space Launch System Engines

LADEE Status

11:50 p.m. EDT Update: Separation of the LADEE spacecraft from the rocket is confirmed. NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), managed by NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., launched at 11:27 p.m. EDT on Sept. 6 from Pad 0B at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va.

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Hope they find what they're looking for.

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The LADEE project may help to explain Transient Lunar Phenomena, wherein small, light colored points and cloudy patches appear and disappear at times on or above the Lunar surface. At least some of these may be due to fine, electrically charged dust particles, suspended in the very thin atmosphere of the Moon.

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LADEE Launches!

LADEE, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer robotic probe launched Friday night atop an Orbital Sciences Corporation Minotaur V rocket. The first deep space mission from Wallops Flight Facility, LADEE will orbit the moon to collect information about its atmosphere and environmental influences on lunar dust.

Data from LADEE will help scientists better understand other planetary bodies in our solar system.

Credit: NASA

Source: NASA - Multimedia