Lunar Prospector:
Overview
Lunar Prospector was designed to provide answers to long-standing questions about the
Moon, its resources, its structure
and its origins. For a year and a half, its five instruments - the gamma-ray spectrometer,
alpha particle spectrometer, neutron spectrometer, magnetometer and electron
reflectometer - mapped lunar resources, gravity, and magnetic fields, and even outgassing
events. After a year and a half of ground-breaking science, Lunar Prospector took a bold
step towards furthering its science legacy by intentionally impacting a targeted south polar
crater of the Moon, in the hopes that ejecta from the impact could be seen from
Earth and analyzed for the existence of water ice.
Lunar Prospector was the first competitively selected and the third to launch in a
series of missions in NASA's Discovery program. This program was developed to produce
frequent, low-cost missions to explore the Solar System.
Lunar Prospector was a simple and reliable spin-stabilized spacecraft. It rotated
around its own central axis in order to control its orientation en route to the Moon.
Prospector was small - when full of fuel, the spacecraft weighed only 295 kg (650 lb).
That's about a quarter as heavy as an average-sized car!
Read More About Lunar Prospector
Visit the Lunar Prospector Website
