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[music]

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[robotic voice] 3,  2,  1...

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[Dana Hurley] I think that it's in human nature to explore.

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[Rich Vondrak] Understanding the moon better,  will help us to understand our neighbors in the solar system.

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[Ashwin Vasavada] We're exploring the solar system here and not just the moon.

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[Cathy Peddie] The moon is the natural next step

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in our exploration of our own universe.

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[drum beats]

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[Craig Tooley] The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

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is as its namesake says,  a reconnaissance mission to the moon.

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Our job is to take a suite of very powerful scientific instruments and make

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an atlas of the entire moon,  in some place in very great detail.

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Topography,  mountain heights,  minerology,  temperatures,

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abundances of resources,  including potentially the intriguing possibility that there's water

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at the moon.  We put all this together into a dataset by flying low over the moon for a year,

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and this is the data that the people designing the systems,  picking the sites,

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need to take us back to the moon.

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[Rich Vondrak] Well,  we learned much about the moon from the Apollo Program,

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but now we want to return to the moon for a more intensive study.

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We want to be able to go back to the moon so that we can live there for longer

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periods and work on the moon,  so we need a mission

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that can help us find the best places to go

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and determine how to go back there safely.

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[muffled] "it's a nice place to land"

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[Cathy Peddie] We know that,  you know,  Neil Armstrong and some of the others had

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a difficult time finding a safe landing site.

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The didn't see it until they got there.  But now with our instruments,  we'll be able to

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tell people ahead of time,  "look,  don't go there."

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[Rich Vondrak]  LRO will have a laser system that will give

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us a high resolution topographic map of the moon.

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It als has high resolution cameras that will identify

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objects that are only a foot or two in size so that we know where there are

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no large boulders that could be a risk to astronauts.

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[Craig Tooley]  So our job is to literally complete the job of mapping the moon,  do it at high resolutions,  and then

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enable the designers of the human systems

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the atlas they need to pick the safe places to go

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the beneficial places to go and where it's most fruitful to go.

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[Cathy Peddie]  In addition to the safe landing sites,  LRO is looking for potential resources,  and now

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why are we doing that?  Because it's really hard to carry all your supplies

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with you,  I mean,  you can do it,  but really spend a lot of

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not only fuel,  but cargo space.  So it'd be really nice to go to a place that

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already has the resources,  whether it's water ice to have water,

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or potential minerals that we could use as raw materials,

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to make into things that we would need.

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[Rich Vondrak]  We think the most interesting parts of the moon may be polar

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regions of the moon because there could be resources there.

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And so we're going to study intesively the polar regions

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with LRO.

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[Craig Tooley]  From the Apollo era we chose to go for good reasons,  because

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it was literally the easiest,  to go to the equatorial regions,  and

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stay a very short time,  and it was a very ambitious program but

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when you look at where would like to go and

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stay for awhile on the moon,  you begin to realize that

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probably the poles are the most interesting place.

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[John Keller]  Access to solar power,  continuously,  that may be

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the first and most important reason over,  you know,  the near term

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And then the possibility of resources being there.

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Those may take much longer time

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before we're able to really exploit those,  but the solar power

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is something that we can exploit right away.

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[Rich Vondrak]  The second big resource on the moon,  may be water ice.

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There's evidence from early missions,  that in dark places at the

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poles,  there may be water at the surface or below.

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the surface in the form of ice crystals.

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If it is abundant,  astronauts could use

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this for both human consumption

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and as a source of rocket fuel.

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LRO will measure for the first time,  this very energetic component

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of the space radiation environment,  in order to see whether it

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is going to be a problems or not.

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[Craig Tooley] It was one thing to go for a handful of days in Apollo,  and go when

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we knew that the Sun was quiet,  or you hope the Sun stayed quiet,

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and you took the risk,  you calculated the risk of cancer and

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such and you made a short mission.  If you're going to live there longer,  you need to

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understand it enough to go,  "Here's what I need to do to protect myself."

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[Cathy Peddie]  One of the things that we're looking for in the LRO mission is

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how the high radiation environment effects

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our ability to explore.  So if we bring cameras or

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communication devices,  you know,  how will they be impacted by

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the cosmic radiation?  We need to protect our equipment as well as ourselves.

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[music ramps up]

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[Craig Tooley] When we look back at what we did in LRO and

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we look at what followed,  I think we'll see a profound impact.  We'll see

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this as really being the small first step

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where we have human beings permanently off this planet.

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Beginning to the move out of the solar system,  starting with the moon,  as that pans out

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I think we'll be a small part of a profound

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development that when history looks back they'll say,  "This time we went back to the moon.  This time

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we stayed,  and then we moved on from there."