American astronomer Edwin Hubble wrote these words in 1936, and he has proven remarkably prescient, save for one point. Despite six lunar landings from 1969 to 1972, we know less about our immediate neighbor than we do about Mars.

Look for that to change this spring, however, when NASA launches the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the first phase of humankind's newest mission to the moon--and a project engineered, in part, by several Hokies.

A step back, a leap forward

Dubbed Time's third-most important invention of 2008, the orbiter, or LRO, is tasked with positioning humankind to return to the moon. Only slightly larger than an Austin Mini-Cooper, LRO will meet an incredible set of mission objectives, including measuring the moon's topography, lighting conditions, and natural resources, such as potential minerals to be mined. Data reported by the orbiter will be used to determine safe landing sites for larger spacecraft and locations for human-manned outposts and will tell researchers how radiation dangers can be minimized.

A perhaps inevitable question is why we should expend so much time and money to seemingly retrace our steps. Yet this is a pioneering mission in several ways, including its new approach to studying the moon.

The focus of the original lunar exploration missions was to touch down on the moon and then return safely, explains David Everett (electrical engineering '86), technical lead for the project. To do so, the spacecraft took what Everett calls "the lowest energy route," which was to approach via the moon's equator. "The problem with the lunar equator is that the environment is nasty," Everett says. "The sun shines for 14 days, and the high temperatures approach 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Then it is dark for 14 days, and the temperature goes down to -220 degrees F."

This lunar mission will instead focus on gathering information during a year-long polar orbit. "At the poles, the sun always comes in at a low angle," Everett says. "There are mountains that are always in the sunlight where we can continuously generate solar power, and there are craters that are permanently shadowed, possibly containing frozen water. LRO is providing the data needed to generate maps for future explorers and to find the landing sites and the resources that those explorers will need." 

Exploring new frontiers

The team of more than 1,100 people includes Hokies from several agencies playing key roles [see sidebar on page 18]. These alumni contributed directly to designing, building, testing, and supporting LRO's systems--especially when it came to anticipating potential problems that could throw off the entire mission.

Indeed, the very nature of the polar orbit has required new ways of thinking about numerous aspects of the mission. For example, when John Lyons (physics '79) was planning and testing LRO's solar arrays, which will supply power to the orbiter by converting sunlight to electricity, he had to consider the extreme conditions that the orbiter will face.

"This solar array design was particularly challenging because the array has to survive thousands of very rapid temperature swings," Lyons explains. "In the very low lunar orbit, the temperature can go from as cold as –275 degrees F to as hot as 275 degrees F in a matter of minutes as LRO emerges from the moon's shadow, and the orbiter will cool off just as rapidly as it re-enters the shadow."

The drastic degree changes are also a potential concern for the output of the Optical Bench Assembly, which houses three instruments that will view the moon's surface and gather data to map it, and the Star Tracker Assembly, which is part of the Guidance Navigation Control System. As these structures continue to warm and cool rapidly and drastically during orbit, their expansion and contraction could cause instruments to focus on the wrong point and gather data that would be erroneously attributed to the intended coordinates, says Bill Chang (civil engineering '77; M.S. mechanical engineering '82). And although the amount of expansion and contraction would be extremely small, Chang points out that even the slightest error would make a huge difference.

"Consider that LRO's orbit altitude is 30 to 70 kilometers above the moon's surface," he says. "At a nominal altitude of 50 kilometers, if the instruments are off point by 1 arcsec, or 1/360th of a degree, that's approximately 8 feet. So if we have a pointing error of 5 arcsec, we will miss the target by some 40 feet." Accuracy is vital here because of the mission objective to find suitable landing sites, he adds. "We cannot afford to pick landing sites that we believe to be flat and clear of debris but are actually dotted with boulders or rock formations, all because our measurements were off." Chang led the design of a thermal control system that will combat this problem by maintaining a reasonably consistent temperature for the two assemblies regardless of where the LRO is in orbit.

The need to monitor the orbiter's progress led scientists to create a system that will use--much like something out of an Austin Powers film--an Earth-based laser. Team lead Ron Zellar (physics '91) explains, "Laser light-pulses will be transmitted to a small, two-inch aperture telescope aboard the LRO when it is in orbit. The light is transferred to a detector that records the arrival time of the laser pulse." This information, he says, will help determine where the LRO is and will contribute to the generation of lunar maps and science data. The laser-ranging system is the first of its kind and will be the first to operate routinely past Earth's orbit.

Another departure for this lunar mission from the original forays to the moon is the partnership forged with scientists from the Russian Institute for Space Research, which developed the Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector. Lead Spacecraft System Engineer Michael Pryzby (mechanical engineering '89) traveled to Moscow several times and met scientists who had worked with Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space and the first to orbit the Earth. "It has been a thrill knowing the first time we went to the moon, it was as part of the space race against the Russians. Now, we get to go together."

Pryzby was fascinated by the differences in design and testing philosophies between Russian and American engineers. "I have the utmost respect for their team," he says. "Each person is talented and extremely knowledgeable--and the kicker is, they do all this in two languages."

Testing... 3... 2... 1...

Because LRO will rely on innovative and complex systems to accurately report vast amounts of data, testing the new technologies has been vital. Take the experience of Jeff Hampton (mechanical engineering '78; M.S. '82), who helped with the vibration testing of the orbiter, during which LRO was placed on a large table that shakes violently, simulating the conditions of liftoff aboard an Atlas rocket.

"As a mechanical engineer, this is good as it gets," Hampton says. "Having the responsibility of shaking a $175 million piece of equipment hard enough to properly test it but not so hard as to damage it can get very exciting, to say the least."

	A graphic of the lunar orbit insertion sequence, which could take two to four days to complete.

This challenge was but one example of the LRO team trying to predict and prepare for every possible outcome. "We have tested everything we can test," Everett says. Yet there remains a huge amount of pressure on everyone who has been involved with the mission. "In no other business does the first unit need to work perfectly," he adds. "This is a very unforgiving business."

Or, as LRO Flight Software Lead Mike Blau (electrical engineering '85) points out, "Everything has to go right, or we'll fly right past the moon."

The ultimate test, of course, will come once the orbiter is launched.

"For the launch, we will strap our 2-ton spacecraft on top of a Atlas V 41 rocket containing a million pounds of rocket fuel," Everett says. "The rocket will burn that fuel in three burns in 19 minutes, leaving LRO traveling at more than 24,000 miles per hour." When LRO reaches the moon after approximately four days, it will then enter an elliptical orbit, or commissioning orbit, from which it will move into its final orbit, a circular polar orbit at a little more than 30 miles above the lunar surface.

And that's when the real mission will begin.

			HANDS-ON HOKIES Kneeling, front row (from left to right): Caitlin Eubank '04, Michael Pryzby '89, Rivers Lamb '00, Ron Zellar '91; standing, back row: Jason Badgley '01, Tim Schwartz '08, Bill Chang '77, Craig Stevens '00, David Everett '86, Greg Greer '86, Sharon Peabody '96, Mike Blau '85, Jeff Hampton '78, Brad Kercheval '91. Several Hokies from numerous organizations have been--and will continue to be--key players in the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission. Here are the ones of whom we're aware to date: Jason K. Badgley (electrical engineering '01), propulsion and deployment electronics lead engineer, NASA (Goddard Space Flight Center) Mike Blau (electrical engineering '85), flight software lead engineer, NASA (Goddard Space Flight Center) Bill Chang (civil engineering '77; M.S. mechanical engineering '82), thermal engineer, Edge Space Systems Shelly (Bright) Conkey (aerospace engineering '97), mechanical analyst for deployable systems, ATK Space Systems Caitlin Eubank (aerospace engineering '04), propulsion engineer, NASA (Goddard Space Flight Center) David Everett (electrical engineering '86), mission systems engineer, NASA (Goddard Space Flight Center) Greg Greer (political science '86), ITOS product lead, The Hammers Company Jeff Hampton (mechanical engineering '78; M.S. '82), mechanical engineer, ATK Space Systems Michael Hersch (M.S. mechanical engineering '86), mechanical systems lead for solar array system, ATK Space Systems Bradford P. Kercheval (electrical engineering '91), power system electronics engineer, MEI Rivers Lamb (aerospace engineering '00; M.S. '02), flight dynamics ground systems lead engineer, NASA (Goddard Space Flight Center) John W. Lyons (physics '79), solar array lead, NASA (Goddard Space Flight Center) Sharon Peabody (engineering science and mechanics '96; M.S. mechanical engineering '97), thermal engineer, Edge Space Systems Michael Pryzby (mechanical engineering '89), spacecraft systems engineer, ATK Space Systems Timothy Schwartz (M.E. mechanical engineering '08), structural dynamics test engineering, NASA (Goddard Space Flight Center) Craig L. Stevens (aerospace engineering '00; M.S. '02), mechanical analysis lead engineer, NASA (Goddard Space Flight Center) Ron Zellar (physics '91), laser ranging lead engineer, NASA (Goddard Space Flight Center)

Aside from the vast quantities of data that the orbiter will gather, there are other justifications for again venturing forth to the moon.

Pryzby agrees. "We often debate if money spent in the space program is money well spent. What I have come to peace with is that this is a small investment in the future. The Earth has limited resources. If we are to survive as a species, we will need to leave this planet. To do that, we will need to learn to survive while off this planet. The moon offers the best place to practice."

This same belief is the foundation of NASA's Exploration Initiative: to develop humankind's ability to go beyond low-Earth orbit and explore the solar system firsthand, not simply via computers and unmanned spacecraft. "Before we can go to Mars or an asteroid, we will try out our camping gear in the backyard," Everett notes. "We will learn how to live for long periods of time on another body, with limited resources, outside the benign environment of the Earth."

Sharon Peabody (engineering science and mechanics '96; M.S. mechanical engineering '97), who aided in the design and analysis of the orbiter's thermal control system, says that a human outpost on the moon "could serve as a mid-port for the building and launch of spacecraft and people. It would be cheaper and easier to launch a spacecraft into a moon-bound orbit, where it could then stock up on fuel, personnel, and hardware before launching into deeper space." Such comments elicit the visions of lunar settlements that sci-fi movies have been showing us for decades, images that call to mind the explorers whom Edwin Hubble foresaw.

Looking at the mission from a philosophical perspective, Chang posits, "Two questions that scientists have been striving to answer are ‘What happened at the beginning, and how was the universe formed?' and ‘Are we alone in the universe?'" A lunar presence, he says, will allow scientists to explore the Big Bang Theory. "The thinking is that the further into space--closer to the epicenter of the explosion--we can see, the more insight we will gain about what actually happened." Permanent, larger, and more advanced telescopes placed on the moon will be better able to provide that view; telescopes based on Earth reflect atmospheric distortion, and those currently in orbit, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, are difficult to update and repair.

"A base on the moon will also allow us to establish a new jumping-off point for human exploration of neighboring planets and, eventually, the universe," Chang adds. "These things will not happen in our lifetime, but every journey starts with the first step."

That first step will come when the orbiter is launched late this spring. Not only will LRO carry the hopes and dreams of the men and women who worked on it, but it also will fulfill what Hubble considered the human need to search for new frontiers. "The urge is older than history," he concluded. "It is not satisfied, and it will not be suppressed."

For more on the mission and for specific launch information, go to http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/.