Ground control saves Euro space mission
Europe’s first mission to the moon got a scare today, but ground controllers were able make a last-minute course correction that kept the craft from prematurely hitting a lunar crater’s rim.
Mission officials said they raised the low point of the SMART-1 spacecraft by 2,000 feet by using its positioning thrusters to avoid the almost mile-high rim.
The manoeuvre of the European Space Agency craft began at about 1am (12am Irish Time Saturday) from mission control in Darmstadt and was completed about three hours later, said Octavio Camino, spacecraft operations chief for the mission.
“We have got confirmation that the manoeuvre was successful,” Camino said.
The craft had been orbiting lower and lower ahead of tomorrow’s impact, which they hope to study from earth for clues to the composition of the moon’s surface in that area.
Had the orbit not been raised the craft would have crashed one orbit too soon making the impact difficult or impossible to observe.
The SMART-1 is to end its three-year voyage at 0641 BST tomorrow, crashing into a volcanic plain called the Lake of Excellence at 4,475 mph.
The impact could increase scientists’ understanding of how the moon’s surface evolved and help test a theory that the moon originated when another astronomical body slammed into the Earth.
Even before the mission ends, however, ESA is already celebrating the main goal – a successful test of the ion engine they hope to use for future interplanetary missions, such as the BepiColombo joint mission to Mercury with Japan’s space agency scheduled for launch in 2013.
SMART-1 was launched into Earth orbit using an Ariane-5 rocket from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guinea, on September 27, 2003.
By contrast, the first manned US moon mission, Apollo 11, took 76 hours to reach lunar orbit in 1969, hurled by a Saturn-V rocket.
SMART-1, a cube measuring roughly a metre on each side, took the long way - more than 62 million miles instead of the direct route of 217,000 to 250,000 miles.
But ESA did it for a relatively cheap £74 million and on only 176lbs of xenon fuel. NASA’s Deep Space 1, launched in 1998, also used an ion engine.
The spacecraft has also been taking high-resolution pictures of the surface with a miniaturised camera.
