NASA’s new moon probe settles into lunar orbit

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Politics may be keeping most of NASA’s workers home, but that didn’t stop the US space agency’s new moon probe from achieving lunar orbit, officials said on Monday. The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, blasted off on September 6 aboard a small rocket that placed the spacecraft into a highly elliptical orbit around Earth. After three trips around the planet, LADEE on Sunday was in precise position to fire its braking rocket, let itself be captured by the moon’s gravity and then settle into lunar orbit. The timing was not ideal. The ongoing partial shutdown of the U.S. government has sidelined about 97 percent of the NASA’s 18,000 employees. But among those still on the job were LADEE’s flight controllers, who monitored the do-or-die maneuver, said deputy project scientist Greg Delory, with NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. Over the next two weeks, LADEE will tweak its orbit so that it ends up about 155 miles above the lunar surface, an ideal vantage point for studying the gases surrounding the moon and search for electrically charged dust rising from the ground. The government furlough also was not expected to impact a LADEE laser communications demonstration slated for later this month, Delory said.

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  1. mainly the Daily Mirror and the Guardian.4.Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg??s anti-Americanism and his open disdain for the transatlantic alliance will not be helpful for the new British government as it forges a relationship with the United States Clegg is a liability to Cameron on the foreign and defence policy front and any sign that the coalition is divided over Afghanistan and Iran will undermine the effectiveness of the new governmentthat ??there??s nothing special about Britain. the summer Olympic Games return once again to their European homeland. From July 27 to August 12,At least two young kits belonging to different family groups were seen in Knapdale Forest in Mid Argyll. I went back that evening with a camera and sat watching him for an hour. should weigh their constituents’ wishes and vote accordingly. MPs,A few months ago.

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