The Sky Tonight

February 17, 2014

LADEE Sends Its First Images of the Moon Back to Earth
Moffett Field, CA (SPX) Feb 17, 2014
Earlier this month, NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) observatory successfully downlinked images of the moon and stars taken by onboard camera systems, known as star trackers. This is the first time the LADEE team commanded the spacecraft to send these pictures back to Earth. The main job of a star tracker is to snap images of the surrounding star field so that the spacecraft can internally calculate its orientation in space. It completes this task many times per minute ... read more

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