LRO was born as a dual-use mission to enable exploration while also making profound new measurements that we might call science.
We're right at the brink now, today, of this profound handoff from the Exploration mission delivering the datasets that the engineers build us,
the tools to go to a new Moon, live and work on a new Moon, to going back to how do we mine the legacy of what we've learned
and what we will learn by operating LRO as a Science asset, as an observatory of the Moon.
This is pretty much unprecedented since the 1960s and is really a wonderful new pathway for NASA
to successfully use this asset for multiple purposes.
Well, Exploration really does aid Science and Science does aid Exploration, and we must work together as we move forward
into the solar system. Exploration aids Science because humans can do things on
on asteroids or at Mars or on the Moon that robots simply can't do.
And Science aids Exploration because the measurements we need to make, especially in advance of humans
exploring these objects, are very synergistic with our Science goals.
As we know, Exploration has been all about mapping the surface of the Moon, looking for resources
And that's very important for potential use by humans of the Moon,
but it's also quite important to understand the origin and evolution of the Moon itself.
So there's a lot of Science that goes along with Exploration.
So LRO is a Reconnaissance Orbiter with seven profound experiments.
Of course the camera is publically appealing, but to me personally, all of the instruments have contributed to the new Moon,
the new Moon rising, if you will, but on a personal basis, the laser altimeter has given us crisp views of the 3-D character of the Moon
everywhere at scales of less than a foot in the resolving power
to see literally where the dust would flow, where the rocks would roll, where the first craters were or were not.
We can find out where it's light all the time on the surface of the Moon using that kind of data,
and now we know that there are great resources hidden in the poles of the Moon. LRO has shown us all of that.
The LROC Camera has shown us a Moon that demonstrates dynamics.
The Moon is puckering; the Moon is reacting to collisions from space,
to radiation from the Sun and the cosmic background. We've seen that now at new scales
everywhere, not a few places where we have landed.
The LOLA Laser Altimeter has exposed the topography, the 3-D character of the poles at the scales we need
to ask questions about how did it get to be the way it is, what was its history
could it be storing frozen stuff, the volitiles that could be a resource, or a science resource?
The Diviner Thermal Radiometer has shown us that the Moon is a really interesting place.
There are places on the Moon colder than the outermost planets in our solar system,
other places warmer than any place on Earth.
And those extremes help us to understand how this planet works.
It's not like the Earth; never was. Quite frankly,
the Neutron Detector has shown us that where the hydrogen is stored is not quite where we expect it to be.
In fact, it's a new Moon in terms of where the Moon has set aside that particular element,
which could be a pathway to following the water.
The Mini RF Radar instrument has shown us the Moon in 3-D at scale depths of a few feet.
We can see into the soil, into the surface, and observe new landscapes that are invisible to us as we fly over.
The far ultraviolet spectrometer has shown us the way the ephemeral atmosphere of the Moon interacts
with the space environment as well as that which we generated ourselves with the LCROSS impact.
The CRaTER experiment is preparing us for understanding how to better adapt humans
to the deep space environment at the Moon, near the Moon, or in deep space in general.
So all the experiments are contributing to a new knowledge base that will better prepare us to live and work in space.
Well, LRO is just a tremendously capable spacecraft with a suite of fabulous instruments.
The spacecraft is incerdibly healthy, and this is going to enable us
to continue to survey the Moon, continue to look for how the Moon is potentially shrinking
as its core dies over time.
We also are quite interested in the origin and evolution of the regolith on the surface.
In addition to, how the volatiles may have been deposited and its interaction with the solar wind.
So LRO brings us a new dimension, a new set of data, that we haven't had before.
One of the most amazing things to me about LRO is that it's shown us that there are many things
we don't know about our nearest neighbor in the solar system. And to me it just says
there's so much more to explore out there; there's so many things we don't know about the Moon, about asteroids, about Mars
It's a great motivator for sending future robotic missions as well as humans to these objects.
LRO has been all about Exploration. But Exploration begets Science, just as Science inspires the Exploration.
So LRO attacks that paradigm from both ends, and that's the beauty of this mission.
So LRO's legacy will not be measured now, but it will be measured accross the following decades
as we learn to explore off planet Earth. And that legacy will both teach us, inform us, and inspire us
to the challenge of new frontiers, the frontier of the Moon, in the case of what LRO has done, and other frontiers that will go beyond.