Lunar Prospector: mission and targets

Project start

January 6, 1998

Declared end

July 31, 1999

The start the archive declares is the start of the project, not the launch, and an end it does not declare does not mean the mission is still running.

Targets you can open in 3D:

• Moon

A declared target is what the archive files the mission’s data under, not a record of observation.

The Lunar Prospector (LP) Mission consisted of a spin-stabilized orbiter spacecraft designed to perform continuous mapping of the Moon from a circular polar orbit. The LP spacecraft was launched on January 7, 1998 (UTC). The primary mapping mission began on January 16, 1998 and lasted for one year. During most of the mapping mission, the spacecraft mapped the surface from a 118-minute, circular, polar orbit 100 km above the moon's surface. Starting on December 19, 1998, the spacecraft was maneuvered into a 40 km orbit as a transition into a low altitude extended mission orbit. The transition orbit was used to collect gravity data in order to verify the moon's gravity model in preparation for conducting the extended mission orbit. The extended mission began on January 16, 1999. The objective of the extended mission was to provide higher resolution mapping from a circular, polar orbit averaging 30 km above the moon's surface. The Lunar Prospector mission ended on July 31, 1999 when the spacecraft was intentionally impacted into a crater near the south pole. The impact site was targeted for one of the hydrogen deposits detected by Lunar Prospector's Neutron Spectrometer.

Quoted in English, as the archive publishes it, read on October 4, 2026.

Identifier in the archive, which is its citation: urn:nasa:pds:context:investigation:mission.lunar_prospector

NASA Planetary Data System, PDS Registry, investigation context products. Dates and targets read on September 29, 2026; how to cite the archive: https://pds.nasa.gov/datastandards/citing/

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