Artist Conception of LRO Orbiting Moon
The flawless launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft took place on Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 5:32 pm from CapeCanaveral, FL. A day after the launch, the K-Band communications system including the Traveling Wave Tube Amplifier (TWTA) onboard was turned on and the downlink was found to perform as expected.
The K-Band downlink can handle data rates as high as 100 Mbps, which is two orders of magnitude higher than the S-Band downlink. A few of the instruments onboard have been turned on and the spacecraft is now routinely sending telemetry data to Earth through the K-Band downlink.
- View the launch video and find more information about the LRO at the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) web site.
