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That's one small step for man one for man. One
giant leap for mankind. On that Unforgettable

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Day July 20th 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first
human to set foot on another world. Apollo 11 was

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the first of six crude missions that landed on the
Moon. Neil Armstrong the first of 12 men to leave

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footprints in the lunar dust. But the Apollo lunar
program ended in 1972 and we haven't been back

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since. But now NASA is taking some small steps to
return to the Moon and they're getting ready for

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another giant leap. It's the Lunar Reconnaissance
Orbiter and it's next on Real World.

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When astronauts first went to the Moon they
never stayed for more than a few days at a

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time. But plans are underway to go back for what
NASA calls a sustainable long-term presence. This

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time we're going to stay. But how do we get
there? What supplies should we bring? Where

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should we build our outposts? This mission is
going to require lots of planning and that's

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where the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter or LRO
comes in. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has

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a suite of instruments which will measure
various components various aspects of the

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lunar surface and in high definition and a detail
that's never been measured before. Noah Petro is

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a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center in Maryland. We're going to see the

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Moon in a completely different way; essentially
creating an atlas of the Moon that were used

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by scientists and by NASA to determine what's at
the surface of the Moon, the spatial extent where

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things might be found also be used to find safe
landing sites for future exploration and to give a

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scientist an idea of how the Moon has changed and
evolved over the last 4 and a half billion years.

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The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was built at
Goddard. It's the size of a large SUV and will

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carry six scientific instruments orbiting 50
km above the Moon, in what is called a Polar

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Orbit. It will pass over both poles every time
around. As the Moon rotates the spacecraft will

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eventually cover the entire surface of the Moon
several times. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter,

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one of its missions is to look for safe landing
sites and those uh areas around the poles and um

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look for resources in those areas around the pole.
John Keller is the Deputy project scientist for

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LRO. We have six instruments on the spacecraft
very high resolution uh cameras the laser which

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gives us measurements of the distance from the
spacecraft to the surface by what's called laser

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altimetry. Laser bounces light off the surface
Moon measures the amount of time the round trip

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reflected light to get back. Scientists will use
data from this laser altimeter call Lola to create

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a high-resolution topographical map of the Moon's
surface. We have a radiometer which will measure

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the day and nighttime temperatures of surface.
We also have on the spacecraft a UV spectrometer

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which will measure essentially reflected
starlight uh on the night side of the Moon

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and also will give us the ability to appear into
the craters of the poles which are permanently

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shadowed because of the low angle of the Sun.
Additionally LRO has a cosmic ray telescope

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instrument to measure the radiation environment
of the Moon including a brand new innovation

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something called Tissue Equivalent Plastic which
mimics human tissue. We going to measure how

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cosmic radiation and solar energetic particles
deposit their energy through this plastic.

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It'll be used by the medical community to
understand the interaction of radiation with

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the uh biological tissue. The sixth instrument on
LRO is the Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector or

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LEND which will create a high-resolution map of
hydrogen distribution and gather info about the

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neutron component of lunar radiation. Scientists
will study its data looking for evidence of water

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ice near the moon surface. That's a lot
of responsibility for one lunar orbiter.

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Just to make sure LRO can handle all that it's
going through some rigorous testing in the days

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leading up to its launch.This is uh the thermal
vac system so the spacecraft's in this and this

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is a a very large vacuum chamber we use it to
not only simulate the vacuum conditions of space

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but also the thermal conditions. Because there
is no atmosphere the surface temperatures will

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range from 120° Centigrade down to -170 and the
spacecraft sees those thermal changes. We have

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heaters in there who were heating the spacecraft
up fairly rapidly and then cooling it down with

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the baffles of liquid nitrogen in order to
to simulate that fairly rapid transition that

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occurs when spacecraft goes from the night side to
the day side. You know the spacecraft orbits the

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Moon in under two hours, and so it sees those uh
thermal transition pretty rapidly. But once it's

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up it's going to return an unprecedented amount
of data. The data is is dominated in terms of

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quantity by a set of high-resolution cameras
called the Narrow Angle Cameras. These cameras

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will give us resolution on the surface of the Moon
from a 50 km orbit half a meter so a pixel size

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is is going to be about a half a meter. Um but it
will take strips the two cameras together can take

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strips of of images which are 5 km wide and 25
km of length. How many pixels is that? Well it's

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uh 5,000 time 25,000 times 4, which is uh comes
from having a half meter resolution. That tells

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you how many pixels each individual image will
be. Now we can take up to 12 images per orbit

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and we get a little over 12 orbits per day and
the first phase of the mission is a full year.

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Wow! That's a lot of digits. So the Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter is the first step in

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our return to the Moon and returning humans
to the Moon will help scientists and all

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of us in fact address fundamental questions
about the history of Earth, the solar system

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and the universe and about our place among
them. And in the words of Neil Armstrong,

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that's a giant leap for mankind. k\Keep
track of the L Mission at www.nasa.gov.

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[Music]