LROviewsLADEEorbitingMOON-20140114
LADEE is in an equatorial orbit (east-to-west) while LRO is in a polar orbit (south-to-north). The two spacecraft are occasionally very close and on Jan. 15, 2014, the two came within 5.6 miles (9 km) of each other. As LROC is a push-broom imager, it builds up an image one line at a time, so catching a target as small and fast as LADEE is tricky. Both spacecraft are orbiting the moon with velocities near 3,600 miles per hour (1,600 m/s), so timing and pointing of LRO must be nearly perfect to capture LADEE in an LROC image.
LADEE passed directly beneath the LRO orbit plane a few seconds before LRO crossed the LADEE orbit plane, meaning a straight down LROC image would have just missed LADEE. The LADEE and LRO teams worked out the solution: simply have LRO roll 34 degrees to the west so the LROC detector (one line) would be in the right place as LADEE passed beneath.
As planned at 8:11 p.m. EST on Jan. 14, 2014, LADEE entered LRO's Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) field of view for 1.35 milliseconds and a smeared image of LADEE was snapped. LADEE appears in four lines of the LROC image, and is distorted right-to-left.Relevantní obrázky
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Lunar Reconnaissance OrbiterLunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) je sonda, kterou americká agentura NASA vyslala v rámci programu Lunar Precursor Robotic Program na oběžnou dráhu kolem Měsíce. Start se konal 18. června 2009 a družici do kosmu vynesla raketa Atlas V. LRO je první misí splňující Vizi vesmírného průzkumu (Vision for Space Exploration) deklarovanou americkým prezidentem Georgem W. Bushem v roce 2004. .. pokračovat ve čtení