Where is LADEE Now, and where is it going?

After the successful launch of LADEE last Friday:

NASA’s LADEE Page

you may be wondering where the LADEE spacecraft is now, and what are the next steps on the trajectory. So here we are, LADEE on Sept 11, 9 AM PDT:

LADEE on Sept 11, 2013

LADEE on Sept 11, 2013

Note the upcoming phasing loops (dotted) and the Moon to the upper right. Of course this is a 3-D picture, and you can get a better feel for where the Moon is now here:

LADEE on Sept. 11, 2013 with Moon (side view)

LADEE on Sept. 11, 2013 with Moon (side view)

We (LADEE Flight dynamics) often like to look at the lunar trajectories in an Earth-Moon rotating frame. The Earth is at the middle, the Moon at the top:

LADEE on Sept. 11 (Earth-Moon Rotating Coordinate frame)

LADEE on Sept. 11 (Earth-Moon Rotating Coordinate frame)

On Sep. 13, 2013, LADEE will reach first perigee:

LADEE at first perigee

LADEE at first perigee

The first orbit-raising maneuver (after the test maneuver on Sep. 11) will occur here. This maneuver is called Perigee Maneuver 1 (PM1) and will raise LADEE’s orbit and change the orbit period from 6.44 days to 7.6 days. This brings us to perigee 2 on Sep. 21, 2013:

Perigee 2

Perigee 2

From here we perform PM2, and raise the orbit period to 10 days. We get back to perigee 3 on Oct. 1, 2013:

Perigee 3

Perigee 3

We have no nominal burn at Perigee 3 (although we may perform a trajectory correction maneuver there, and one more 36 hrs later for our final precise targeting to our Lunar arrival conditions).

Finally, we take a 5-day transfer to the Moon, where we arrive on Oct. 6, 2013 for our first Lunar Orbit Insertion burn (LOI-1). We use 3 maneuvers for Lunar capture, which we will describe in another post.

Lunar Approach

Lunar Approach

Here’s a few more pictures of the complete LADEE trajectory:

Complete LADEE Cislunar Trajectory, Earth Centered Inertial coordinate frame.

Complete LADEE Trajectory, Earth Centered Inertial coordinate frame.

Complete LADEE Cislunar Transfer trajectory, Earth-Moon Rotating Coordinate Frame

Complete Lunar Transfer trajectory, Earth-Moon Rotating Coordinate Frame