If you happen to live along or near the Mid-Atlantic seaboard and your sky is clear late Friday night, you will have a good chance to catch a glimpse of a rocket that will be sending a NASA space probe to the moon.
The spacecraft is NASA's small, car-sized Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), a robotic mission that will orbit the moon to gather detailed information about the structure and composition of the thin lunar atmosphere, as well as moon dust conditions near the surface.
The LADEE spacecraft is slated to blast off at 11:27 p.m. EDT, when it will light up the night over its launch pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. It should be visible along large portions of the U.S. East Coast for observers who have clear skies and know where to look.
NASA will webcast the moon shot live on Friday night. You can watch the LADEE launch live on SPACE.com here beginning at 9:30 p.m. EDT, courtesy of NASA TV.
LADEE will carry three science instruments and one technology demonstration to the moon. A thorough understanding of the moon's atmosphere and dust environment will address long-standing lunar mysteries and help scientists understand other planetary bodies as well.
LADEE will be launched on a U.S. Air Force Minotaur V rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), a commercial space launch facility located at the southern tip of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the Delmarva Peninsula, south of Chincoteague, Va. It will be the first payload to be launched on a Minotaur V (integrated by Orbital Sciences Corporation), as well as the first deep-space mission to be launched from Wallops Island.
The Minotaur V is an eight-story, five-stage rocket which will launch the LADEE spacecraft into a highly elliptical orbit where it can phase and time its trajectory burn to the moon. LADEE will spend about two and a half months traveling to the moon, and then it will spend 100 days orbiting our natural satellite and conducting science experiments at an altitude of about 30 miles. After its science mission is complete, the orbiter will impact the lunar surface.
The Minotaur V is set to launch during a short four-minute window of opportunity starting at 11:27 p.m. It will then travel over the Atlantic Ocean on an east-southeast trajectory.
During the first three minutes and 28 seconds after leaving Pad-0B at Wallops Island, the first three stages of the rocket will ignite and burn out, and it is during this time frame that favorably positioned observers in the eastern U.S. and the Canadian Maritime Provinces will be able to watch the Minotaur V on its climb to space. The first three stages are former Peacekeeper solid rocket motors with over 50 flights of each stage.
The light emitted by the firing of each motor will produce a light in the sky similar to a very bright star shining with a yellow-white tinge. It might seem that the rocket dips back to Earth as it moves farther away from the observer — just as a ship appears to sink as it moves out to sea — but actually the rocket is going higher, faster and farther from populated areas. Four of the Minotaur's five rocket stages will drop off and break up far out over the ocean. The fifth stage, along with LADEE, will be inserted in high Earth orbit.
The first stage will exhaust its supply of propellant 58 seconds after launch and will be jettisoned at an altitude of 14 miles. Within a few seconds, the second stage's SR119 motor will then ignite to continue the flight toward space.
The second stage SR119 motor will burn out 2 minutes 15 seconds after launch at an altitude of 61 miles. The Hercules SR120 third-stage motor will then take over, firing for a 72-second burn. After the third stage shuts down, the Minotaur V will enter a coast period (not visible to the eye) lasting almost four minutes, during which the vehicle's altitude will soar to more than 160 miles in altitude.
When the third stage burns out, the rocket will have reached an altitude of 100.6 miles at a point 333.9 miles downrange east-southeast from Wallops Island. This will allow visibility of at least a part of the launch as far north as Van Buren, Maine, as far south as Myrtle Beach, S.C., and as far west as Summersville, W. Va.
The key to sighting the rocket is to have a clear, unobstructed view of the horizon in the direction of Wallops Island. For example, a viewer in Raleigh, N.C., should look toward the northeast; in Providence, R.I., you should face southwest; in Pittsburgh, Pa., it'll be in the southeast.
The closer the viewer is to Wallops Island, the higher the arc in the sky that will be traced by the Minotaur V rocket launch. Keep in mind that a clenched fist held at arm’s length measures roughly 10 degrees.
Across central North Carolina and Virginia, the easternmost tip of South Carolina, the eastern half of West Virginia, western Maryland, much of western and central Pennsylvania, western and northern New York as well as northern and central New England, the rocket will reach a maximum altitude of 5 to 10 degrees.
For much of eastern North Carolina and eastern Virginia, including the heavily populated "Northeast Corridor" that encompasses the major metropolitan areas running from Washington, D.C., to New York City and on into Southern New England and Boston, the rocket will appear to climb to an altitude of 10 to 15 degrees.
Across the Outer Banks of North Carolina, those sections of Virginia and Maryland that border the west side of Chesapeake Bay as well as the northern third of the Delmarva Peninsula, central New Jersey, all of Long Island, as well as the Atlantic coast of New England including Cape Cod and the Islands will see the Minotaur V reach as high as 15 to 20 degrees above the horizon.
From the middle of the Delmarva Peninsula and the Virginia Capes, the rocket will appear to soar as high as 20 to 25 degrees, while those watching from southern Delaware and Maryland’s Atlantic coast will see it reach an altitude of at least 25 degrees — more than "two fists" up from the horizon.
The closer to Wallops Island, the longer the change to view the Minotaur V in view during the three-minute, 28-second timeframe after liftoff. Within a 15-mile radius of Wallops, the rocket will become visible within less than 30 seconds of its launch.
Within a 120-mile radius, it may take up to 60 seconds before the rocket emerges from above the horizon.
And going out to a radius of 500 miles, it may be as long as two minutes before an initial sighting.
Organizations interested in hosting a launch viewing event may submit the event information at go.nasa.gov.
Android users have the option of downloading the new “What’s Up at Wallops” app, which contains information on the launch as well as a compass showing the precise direction for launch viewing. The app is available for download at: gonasa.gov.
Spaceflight Now is also providing blow-by-blow coverage of LADEE's mission via the Mission Status Center, which will also include a launch webcast feed.
For those planning to watch the launch in the general vicinity of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, two prime observing locations have been set up. In partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Accomack County Board of Supervisors and the Town of Chincoteague, visitors to the area may view the launch from Robert Reed Park on Chincoteague or Beach Road spanning the area between Chincoteague and Assateague Islands.
The two sites will feature the LADEE launch countdown live, and NASA personnel will be on hand to discuss the LADEE moon dust mission. In addition, a live broadcast of the moon shot will be shown on a big-screen projector in Robert Reed Park beginning at 9:30 p.m. EDT on launch night.
The Robert Reed Park and Beach Road viewing sites are the official viewing sites for the LADEE launch. Area residents and visitors to the area should note that the beach on Assateague Island will close at 7 p.m. EDT on the day of launch and will not be open for launch viewing given the safety area required for LADEE’s launch trajectory.
It is also expected that the NASA Visitors Center located on Route 175 will reach capacity early and will close well before the launch. For launch updates, call: (757) 824-2050.
Image: Flickr, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
This article originally published at Space.com here
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