NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

+ NASA Homepage
+ NASA en Español
+ Contact NASA
PDS Geosciences Node, Washington University in St. Louis
HOME DATA AND SERVICES TOOLS ABOUT US CONTACT US SITE MAP
Services
Geosciences Node Data
Help
Scheduled Maintenance
This site may be down on Thursdays between 7:00 and 9:30 pm Central Time for maintenance.

Lunar Prospector

October 11, 2007. Lunar Prospector Orbit Data Files (ODFs) are now available here.

Lunar Prospector (LP) was a spin-stabilized spacecraft, operating in a 100 km circular, polar orbit around the Moon during its Primary Mission in 1998. The orbit was lowered to 30 km for the Extended Mission that began in January 1999. The mission ended on July 31, 1999, when the spacecraft was targeted to impact a crater near the lunar south pole to try to vaporize part of the suspected water deposits.

The science goals of LP were to map the Moon's surface composition and its magnetic and gravity fields, to determine the frequency and location of gas release events, and to search for polar ice deposits. To meet these objectives, LP had five science instruments located on three booms: a gamma ray spectrometer, a neutron spectrometer, an alpha particle spectrometer, a magnetometer, and an electron reflectometer. In addition, Doppler tracking data was used to derive gravity measurements.

The preliminary science results from Lunar Prospector have been published in the September 4, 1998 issue of Science. Also, a detailed description of the Lunar Prospector spacecraft is available in the LP Mission Handbook document (Adobe Acrobat format file; 760 KB).

Lunar Prospector Data Sets

Level 0 Data Archive
Raw data from the gamma ray spectrometer, neutron spectrometer, alpha particle spectrometer, magnetometer, and electron reflectometer; raw engineering data; spacecraft ephemeris files for the Primary and Extended Missions.
 
Level 1 Spectrometer Data Archive
Preliminary versions of gamma ray integrated spectra and maps of thorium, potassium, thermal neutrons, and epithermal neutrons.
 
Spectrometer Reduced Data
  • Corrected gamma ray and neutron spectra.
  • Neutron and elemental abundance maps from gamma ray and neutron spectrometers.
Spherical Harmonic Gravity Models and Digital Gravity Maps
Spherical harmonic models of the lunar gravity field, digital maps of Bouguer anomalies, free-air gravity accelerations and errors, and geoid anomalies and errors.
 
Line-Of-Sight (LOS) Gravity Data
Line-of-sight acceleration profiles (LOSAPDRs).
 
Level 1 Magnetometer / Electron Reflectometer Data
Time series magnetometer and reflectometer data sets available from the PDS Planetary Plasma Interactions (PPI) Node.
 
Orbit Data Files (ODFs)
Orbit tracking data from the Deep Space Network (DSN). These files are not part of a PDS archive but are provided as-is because of interest expressed by users of LP data derived from these files.
 

Lunar Prospector Search Tools

Lunar Orbital Data Explorer (ODE) - Provides search, display, and download  tools for selected Lunar Prospector data sets.
 
PDS Nodes PDS Atmospheres Geosciences Imaging NAIF PPI Rings Small Bodies
FirstGov Logo
+ Freedom of Information Act
+ NASA 2003 Strategic Plan
+ NASA Privacy Statement, Disclaimer, and
   Accessibility Certification

+ Copyright/Image Use Policy
NASA Logo
Curator: Susan Slavney
NASA Official: Raymond E. Arvidson
Last Updated:
+ Comments and Questions