- Jul 16, 2001
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Work on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) set for launch in 2008, and on the lander known only as RLEP-2--the second mission in the Robotic Lunar Exploration Program--is being driven more by the need to find a place for humans to land again than by unfettered curiosity about Earth's huge satellite.
"When we compete instruments or missions on the science side, we ask people to describe the scientific investigation they wish to pursue, and it's important to reference things like National Academies' priority for science," says Laurie A. Leshin, director of sciences and exploration at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Md. "In this case, these proposals were not written that way."
Leshin, a planetary scientist who joined NASA after serving on the presidential commission that advised the agency on implementing President Bush's exploration policy, stresses that the robotic program will produce important results for scientists and explorers. At the top of the list is a potential answer to questions raised by two earlier lunar orbiters, the Pentagon's Clementine and NASA's Lunar Prospector. Both found evidence of large quantities of hydrogen at the lunar poles, suggesting that water ice may exist there in the permanent deep-freeze of deep craters where sunlight can't reach.
"If we can determine there's water somewhere, that's a big deal," says Scott Horowitz, associate administrator for exploration systems. "That has huge impacts on what we do for our architecture for exploration in the future."
Work on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) set for launch in 2008, and on the lander known only as RLEP-2--the second mission in the Robotic Lunar Exploration Program--is being driven more by the need to find a place for humans to land again than by unfettered curiosity about Earth's huge satellite.
"When we compete instruments or missions on the science side, we ask people to describe the scientific investigation they wish to pursue, and it's important to reference things like National Academies' priority for science," says Laurie A. Leshin, director of sciences and exploration at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Md. "In this case, these proposals were not written that way."
Leshin, a planetary scientist who joined NASA after serving on the presidential commission that advised the agency on implementing President Bush's exploration policy, stresses that the robotic program will produce important results for scientists and explorers. At the top of the list is a potential answer to questions raised by two earlier lunar orbiters, the Pentagon's Clementine and NASA's Lunar Prospector. Both found evidence of large quantities of hydrogen at the lunar poles, suggesting that water ice may exist there in the permanent deep-freeze of deep craters where sunlight can't reach.
"If we can determine there's water somewhere, that's a big deal," says Scott Horowitz, associate administrator for exploration systems. "That has huge impacts on what we do for our architecture for exploration in the future."