Status: Active. First Launch: 2013-09-07. Last Launch: 2013-09-07. Number: 1 .
NASA Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Enviroment Explorer mission. It carried an ultraviolet spectrometer, a lunar dust experiment, a neutral mass spectrometer, and a laser communications experiment. An Aerojet Rocketdyne/Redmond R-4D-15 HiPAT 455N thruster, with 135 kg of propellant, was used for lunar orbit insertion and orbit maneuvers. After three perigee boost maneuvers it entered lunar gravitational sphere of influence on 6 October at 18:02 GMT. The lunar orbit insertion burn at 10:57 GMT placed LADEE in a 24-hour-period 269 km x 15,772 km selenocentric orbit inclined 157 deg to the lunar equator. Two further burns, the last on 12 October at 10:40 GMT, placed the spacecraft in a 248 km x 251 km orbit. The spacecraft was lowered into an orbit with a 2 km perilune in early April 2014, and it impacted the lunar farside between 04:30 and 05:22 GMT April 18, possibly on the east rim of the crater Sundman V at 12N 93W, north of Mare Orientale.