Sweet, two free lunar missions.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Check this piece of news from today - I had no idea that these two satellites were in the process of being redirected to the Moon. To quickly summarize the process: two THEMIS satellites had their orbits shift over time to one that involved more and more shadow each day, and this was proving to be a problem. So after some clever calculations it was determined that they could be sent to the Moon through a long process that involves using the Lagrange points on either side, and eventually slipping into lunar orbit by next year. Even better, this video shows you exactly how it's done. Looks like April next year is when they will begin orbiting the Moon, under a new mission name known as ARTEMIS.

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