Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is on a 30-day transit to the moon. The spacecraft blasted off from Pad 0B at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, VA on Friday, Sep 6 at 11:27 pm EDT.
The unmanned probe that LADEE shot into space is on a mission to orbit the moon and gather detailed information about its thin exosphere and lunar dust environment. Information gained will not only help scientists answer long-standing wonders about the moon, but also help understand other planetary bodies with exospheres, like Mercury and some of Jupiter’s bigger moons.
VACCO proudly supplied the following hardware to SS Loral, who built the propulsion for the LADEE spacecraft:
