Mission Atlas
← Mission directory

Mission record

LCROSS

Also known as Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · Launched

Explore trajectory

Completed · Success

A NASA mission that steered a spent upper stage into a permanently shadowed south polar crater and flew through the plume to look for water.

Destinations
Launch vehicle
Atlas V 401
Launch site
Cape Canaveral, United States
Countries
United States
Mission types
Impactor

Chronology

Mission timeline

  1. Launch

    LCROSS launched with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on an Atlas 5 401

  2. Milestone

    LCROSS separated from LRO

  3. Milestone

    TCM 1

    Flight report duration 579.6 seconds and delta-v magnitude 8.06 m/s. Direction is not determined by these scalar values.

  4. Milestone

    TCM 2

    Flight report duration 112.6 seconds and delta-v magnitude 1.502 m/s. Direction is not determined by these scalar values.

  5. Deployment

    Payload cover opened for star-field calibration

  6. Milestone

    TCM 3

    Flight report duration 64 seconds and delta-v magnitude 0.862 m/s. Direction is not determined by these scalar values.

  7. Flyby

    LCROSS passed the Moon at 3200 km, receiving a gravity assist

    Moon

  8. Milestone

    TCM 5A

    Flight report duration 1790 seconds and delta-v magnitude 21.124 m/s. Direction is not determined by these scalar values.

  9. Milestone

    TCM 7

    Flight report duration 39.4 seconds and delta-v magnitude 0.324 m/s. Direction is not determined by these scalar values. September 25 follows the flight-director log; the technical report table prints September 5 and its time remains unresolved.

  10. Milestone

    TCM 8

    Flight report duration 45.8 seconds and delta-v magnitude 0.351 m/s. Direction is not determined by these scalar values.

  11. Milestone

    TCM 9

    Flight report duration 7.6 seconds and delta-v magnitude 0.055 m/s. Direction is not determined by these scalar values.

  12. Milestone

    The Shepherding Spacecraft separated from the Centaur upper stage

    Moon

  13. Milestone

    Shepherd braking burn

    Flight report duration 240 seconds and delta-v magnitude 9.03 m/s. Direction is not determined by these scalar values.

  14. Impact

    The Centaur impacted Cabeus crater near the lunar south pole at about 2.5 km/s

    The page gives 11:31:19.5 UT; the record carries whole seconds, which is the finest precision the schema expresses.

    Moon

  15. Impact

    The Shepherding Spacecraft flew through the ejecta plume for about four minutes before striking the Moon

    The page gives 11:35:36.1 UT; the record carries whole seconds.

    Moon

Mission architecture

Vehicles

  • LCROSS Shepherding Spacecraft · Impactor

    Destinations: Moon

  • LCROSS Centaur impactor · Impactor

    Destinations: Moon

Trajectory record

Time-dependent navigation trajectory

Source states place the model at the selected time. Reconstructed flight, estimates, predictions and historical mission plans are identified by interval; gaps remain visible.

J2000 · Sun-centered display · positions interpolated between source states

Coverage: June 23, 2009 to October 9, 2009

Source records and sampling assumptions are retained with the repository data. Model attitude and surface appearance are illustrative.

  • LCROSS Centaur impactor: Physically reconstructed based on publicly available data · JPL final navigation solution · post-separation only · October 9, 2009 to October 9, 2009
  • LCROSS Shepherding Spacecraft: Physically reconstructed based on publicly available data · JPL navigation-solution arcs · unresolved gaps · June 23, 2009 to October 9, 2009

Provenance

Sources

Each source is listed once and labeled with the mission, event, trajectory, or destination/body context it supports.

Data verified through September 13, 2026