Back to the Moon: NASA Launches Prospector

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (January 7, 1998 11:30 a.m. EST http://www.nando.net) -- A little drumlike spacecraft called Prospector hurtled toward the moon Wednesday, its task to search for water, minerals and gases during NASA's first lunar mission in 25 years.

"It certainly feels good to be going back," program scientist Joseph Boyce said after Tuesday night's launch. "I couldn't be more excited, more happy, more pleased."

The unmanned Prospector, due to arrive at the moon Sunday, carries five science instruments that will search from lunar orbit for evidence of frozen water at the shadowy poles, as well as for minerals and gases. Such resources, especially water, could be used by human settlers.

The 4-foot, 650-pound spacecraft also contains an ounce of the ashes of Eugene Shoemaker, a planetary scientist who trained the Apollo astronauts in lunar geology in the 1960s and early 1970s and always yearned to fly to the moon. He died in a car accident last summer.

"He's going to be the man in the moon to us," his widow, Carolyn Shoemaker, said with a smile after witnessing the launch with her children and grandchildren.

A half moon gleamed in the sky as the Athena rocket blasted off at 9:28 p.m., one day late. Monday's launch attempt was foiled by the failure of Air Force radar needed to track the rocket; the problem was fixed in time for Tuesday's effort.

Launch controllers cheered and applauded at liftoff and again at each milestone. An hour into the flight, an attached motor promptly fired, propelling Prospector out of low-Earth orbit and toward the moon 240,000 miles away. Aside from initial communication snags, everything went well.

"We feel like we have taken a giant step forward toward returning to the moon," mission manager Scott Hubbard said. "A great ride. A healthy spacecraft. And very shortly we will start to do a whole series of other things that will continue to demonstrate that we're going back to the moon and taking some important measurements."

NASA, which last explored the moon in December 1972 with Apollo 17, expects to begin collecting scientific data as soon as Prospector settles into a 60-mile-high polar orbit next Tuesday.

Scientists should know within a month or two whether the poles hold frozen water. Some scientists believe the poles hold as much as 1 billion tons of water ice, a theory bolstered by information from the military's Clementine spacecraft, launched to the moon in 1994 to test missile-detecting sensors.

The presence of ice would make it easier for NASA to establish a lunar base. Astronauts, for instance, could separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel and even turn the moon into a gas station for ships bound elsewhere.

Prospector, built by Lockheed Martin Corp., which also made the Athena rocket, will survey the moon for at least a year before crashing onto its surface, where it will join the trash and equipment left behind by the 12 astronauts who walked on the moon.

The $63 million mission is part of NASA's low-cost, fast-paced Discovery program to explore the solar system.

Boyce said missions like this one and Mars Pathfinder, a Discovery project that culminated in a landing last July 4 on Mars, constitute "the start of the next golden age of planetary exploration."

"This particular golden age," said Boyce, who worked on the Apollo moon shots, "will tell us much about the moons and the planets and even our home, the Earth."

By MARCIA DUNN, Associated Press Aerospace Writer