LCROSS heads to Florida

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. - NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite is enroute from Northrop Grumman's facility in Redondo Beach, Calif., to Florida's Kennedy Space Center in preparation for a spring launch. The satellite's mission is to search for water ice on the moon in a permanently shadowed crater near one of the lunar poles. LCROSS is a companion mission to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. At Kennedy the two spacecraft will be integrated with an Atlas V launch vehicle and tested for final flight worthiness. LCROSS and LRO are the first missions in NASA's plan to return humans to the moon and begin establishing a lunar outpost by 2020. (Source: NASA, 02/17/09) Gulf Coast note: Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans and Stennis Space Center in Mississippi are involved in the Constellation Program, the return of astronauts to the moon and beyond