NASA took the first concrete step toward returning human beings to the moon Thursday, successfully launching the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on a mission to find the best place to land and build Earth's first off-world colony.
The 19-story-high, two-stage rocket and spacecraft launched at 2:32 p.m. Pacific time. As the huge first-stage Atlas V rocket roared to life at Cape Canaveral in central Florida, NASA spokesman George Diller called it "America's first step in a lasting return to the moon."
The $500-million orbiter will spend the next year cruising just 31 miles above the lunar surface, employing a suite of seven instruments to identify landing hazards such as rocks and craters.
It will be paying particular attention to the largely unknown lunar poles, where previous missions have picked up hints that water ice may exist in some permanently shadowed craters.
Locating water on the apparently desiccated moon would be a major discovery that would make permanent settlements much more feasible. Water would not only be useful for drinking, but it would also be invaluable as a source of oxygen for respiration and rocket fuel.
Finding water is so important, in fact, that riding along with the orbiter is a second spacecraft that has no other job than to punch a hole in one of the polar craters, in hopes of sending a plume of ice and debris six miles above the lunar surface.
Although the relatively inexpensive $79-million Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite is a minor part of the mission, the idea has captured the attention of the public, from amateur to professional astronomers.
Thousands of sky watchers are expected to turn their telescopes to the moon on the morning of Oct. 9, when the water-seeking satellite steers the fuel-depleted second-stage Centaur rocket into a crater at 5,600 mph.
For those in the western United States, where the moon will still be up, the plume should be clearly visible with a moderately sized backyard telescope, NASA said.
"For astronomers all over the United States, this is going to be a very exciting day," said John Marmie, deputy project manager for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission, which is managed by the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. "It's going to be a smashing success."
