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Mission record

LCROSS

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · Launched

Explore trajectory

Completed · Success

A NASA mission that steered a spent upper stage into a permanently shadowed south polar crater and flew through the plume to look for water.

Destinations
Moon
Launch vehicle
Atlas V 401
Launch site
Cape Canaveral, United States
Countries
United States
Mission types
Impactor

Chronology

Mission timeline

  1. Launch

    LCROSS launched with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on an Atlas 5 401

  2. Milestone

    LCROSS separated from LRO

  3. Flyby

    LCROSS passed the Moon at 3200 km, receiving a gravity assist

    Moon

  4. Milestone

    The Shepherding Spacecraft separated from the Centaur upper stage

    Moon

  5. Impact

    The Centaur impacted Cabeus crater near the lunar south pole at about 2.5 km/s

    The page gives 11:31:19.5 UT; the record carries whole seconds, which is the finest precision the schema expresses.

    Moon

  6. Impact

    The Shepherding Spacecraft flew through the ejecta plume for about four minutes before striking the Moon

    The page gives 11:35:36.1 UT; the record carries whole seconds.

    Moon

Mission architecture

Vehicles

  • LCROSS · Impactor

    Destinations: Moon

Trajectory record

Trajectory dataset not yet available

No verified trajectory dataset is committed for this mission, so Mission Atlas renders no path.

Provenance

Sources

Each source is listed once and labeled with the mission, event, trajectory, or destination/body context it supports.

Data verified through August 27, 2026