NASA

NASA Goddard Shoots the Moon to Track Lunar Spacecraft

Published in Medical Device Business Week, October 7th, 2009

28 times per second, engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center fire a laser that travels about 250,000 miles to hit the minivan-sized Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft moving at nearly 3,600 miles per hour as it orbits the moon.

The first laser ranging effort to track a spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit on a daily basis produces distance measurements accurate to about four inches (10 centimeters). For comparison, the microwave stations tracking LRO measure its range to a precision of about 65 feet (20 meters).

"Current lunar maps are not as accurate as we'll need to return people safely to the moon," said Ronald Zellar of NASA...

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Source: Medical Device Business Week (2009-10-07)

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