As a long-time Space Nerd trying to manage her expectations, it’s easy for me to settle into a cocoon of pessimism when it comes to the prospect of boots on the surface of the moon and Mars. After all, no concrete plans for a crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit are in the pipeline—we’re still in the early stages of rebuilding our manned spaceflight infrastructure, and the maiden un-crewed flight of the new heavy-lift “Space Launch System” isn’t slated until 2017. And yet, quietly and with little fanfare, NASA is inching its way toward our return to the moon one tiny satellite at a time.
The latest of which is LADEE—the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer—set to launch between August and October of 2013. It’s a smallish, unassuming satellite, weighing only 383 kg and standing just under two meters tall. But it has more than its share of jobs to do in the 130 days between its arrival in lunar orbit and its scheduled crash landing on the moon’s surface.