NASA spacecraft lifts off to probe lunar dust

September 07, 2013 13:15

An unmanned Minotaur 5 rocket blasted off from the Virginia coast on Friday to send a small NASA science satellite on its way to the moon, officials said.

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer spacecraft, known as LADEE, was designed to look for dust rising from the lunar surface, a phenomenon reported by the Apollo astronauts decades ago.

"For the first time in 40 years, we have the opportunity to address that mystery," project scientist Richard Elphic, with NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, said during a launch broadcast on NASA TV.

From an orbit as low as about 31 miles (50 km) above the lunar surface, LADEE also will probe the thin pocket of gases surrounding the moon. The tenuous atmosphere, which contains argon, helium, sodium, potassium and other elements, may hold clues about how water came to be trapped inside craters on the moon's frozen poles.

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