Moon Mission Launch Successful, NASA's LADEE Open Doors for Future Mars and Asteroid Exploration

It has been 44 years since man has graced the moon’s surface. The United States’ Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on our orbiting companion back in 1969. With the technological leaps made in the past four centuries, it’s curious as to why we haven’t made the trek since, especially with the initial landing shrouded in conspiracy theories. What’s holding us back? If we could do it in 1969 we can undoubtedly do it again.

And we just might. On Friday, NASA Wallops Flight Facility and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport launched a robotic lunar mission marked the beginning of a new era. The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, nicknamed LADEE, took off from Wallops Island, Virginia at 11:27 p.m., representing the first launch from Virginia and putting on a spectacular show for the 1,400 guests watching from the NASA Visitor Center.

The LADEE moon mission, which cost NASA $280 million, will investigate the moon’s atmosphere and how dust behaves above its silver surface. Throughout the Apollo missions of the 60s and 70s, astronauts noted the lunar glow believed to be a result of lunar dust, but scientists are still unclear of its primary causes.

“Sometimes we get a little bit surprised when we start talking about a lunar atmosphere, because most of us were taught in school that the moon doesn’t actually have an atmosphere,” said Sarah Noble, NASA’s LADEE program scientist. “It does, but it’s very, very, thin.”

It will take 30 days for LADEE to reach the moon’s orbit, followed by another 40 days of staging and checkout. From there, the spacecraft will travel the moon’s atmosphere for 100 days, collecting samples of lunar dust at an altitude between 12 and 37 miles above the surface. Upon completion, it will intentionally crash into the surface.

The mission will help answer the questions surrounding the moon’s ominous glow and will serve as a benchmark in the ongoing pursuit of space exploration. First stop the moon, and then onward.