Mar 12 1997
From The Space Library
NASA announced the completed construction of the Lunar Prospector spacecraft, scheduled for launch in September 1997. Engineers had designed the craft to obtain the first compositional and gravity maps of the Moon. G. Scott Hubbard, NASA's Lunar Prospector Mission Manager at Ames Research Center, praised contractor Lockheed Martin for its efficient construction and for keeping project costs at forecasted levels. NASA projected that the total cost to build Lunar Prospector and send it to the Moon would be about US$63 million. Scientists explained the need to return to the Moon, even though it was "conquered" decades ago, reminding the public that many important questions about the Moon's history and its fundamental composition remained unexplored. Researchers hoped that Lunar Prospector's planned one-year mission orbiting the Moon would create a detailed map of the Moon's surface composition and gravitational and magnetic fields. Lunar Prospector itself was compact-only 4.5 feet (1.37 meters) high, 4 feet (1.22 meters) in diameter, and weighing 660 pounds (300 kilograms). Even before its launch, scientists hailed Lunar Prospector as a new type of pathfmder, which had "made history in terms of management style, technical approach, cost management, and focused science." Prospector used a gamma-ray spectrometer to provide maps of the composition of the Moon, thereby allowing scientists to understand better the elements present in the surface layer of the Moon.
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