A Look Back at LADEE

by SEE Team Collaboration | Apr 18, 2024 | General Comments

April 18th marks 10 years since the NASA LADEE mission successfully ended with an impact to the lunar surface! The NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) led this mission, which carried three instrument payloads and one tech demo – the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration. The mission operated successfully through its planned science phase of 100 days and an extended mission phase of 45 days, with the last few weeks spent operating at an extremely low altitude to enhance science collection.

SEE’s Lisa Policastri served as the Orbit Determination Lead throughout all phases of mission development and mission operations, including during the final shift on console at the ARC multi-mission operations center when LADEE impacted the Moon at the Sundman V crater rim at a velocity of 3,600 miles per hour.

The image below, from our 2014 archives, shows our model of LADEE’s position in orbit (red line) with the uncertainty model (red ellipsoid) just before impact at the Sundman V Crater ridge on this day 10 years ago.

Later in 2014, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera confirmed the location of LADEE’s impact.

NASA’s 2014 article titled “NASA’s LRO Spacecraft Captures Images of LADEE’s Impact Crater” states, ” ‘The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) team recently developed a new computer tool to search Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) before and after image pairs for new craters, the LADEE impact event provided a fun test,’ said Mark Robinson, LROC principal investigator from Arizona State University in Tempe. ‘As it turns there were several small surface changes found in the predicted area of the impact, the biggest and most distinctive was within 968 feet (295 meters) of the spot estimated by the LADEE operations team. What fun!’ ”

In addition to Lisa, many current SEE team members were heavily involved in the LADEE mission’s success, including Mike Loucks, John Carrico, Craig Nickel, Alisa Hawkins, and Ryan Lebois. The entire LADEE mission operations team was a truly amazing group! No one slept much during those final days – everyone relied on strong teamwork and lots of caffeine and snacks!

To learn more about the mission’s completion, check out NASA’s article, “NASA Completes LADEE Mission with Planned Impact on Moon’s Surface.”