Lunar Dust Experiment Slated to Crash on Moon's Surface After Successful Mission
The Lunar Atmospheric and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), has reached the end of its mission, and is slated to crash on the moon's surface, according to NASA. In a teleconference on April 4th, NASA announced that the $280 Million mission had reached the end of its operations. The experiment was designed to collect and analyze samples of any lunar dust particles in the tenuous atmosphere.
LADEE included the CU-Boulder developed Lunar Dust Experiment (LDEX), LDEX was developed under the direction of Principal investigator Mihaly Horanyi, a professor with the Department of Physics and scientist with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). The CU-Boulder team reports having collected data from more than 11,000 impacts from dust particles since LADEE's arrival to the moon in October 2013.
NASA extended the LADEE Mission past its 100-day mark back in March. Now, LADEE is slated to end its mission by crashing into the moon's surface on Monday, April 21st.
