Although the instrument itself is tiny, seeing it launched toward the moon Friday night was cause for big celebration at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
About 60 LASP researchers and their friends and family members gathered at the lab on CU's east campus to watch a live feed of NASA's launch of the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer.
Aboard the probe, which was launched from a Virginia flight facility at 9:27 p.m. mountain time, is a $6 million instrument designed and built by LASP scientists to provide data on the presence, means of transport and other properties of lunar dust particles.
The Lunar Dust Experiment instrument, or LDEX, is about the size of a toaster.
LASP researchers hope data collected through LDEX may help explain a lunar phenomenon experienced by Apollo astronauts who visited the moon in the 1960s and '70s. The astronauts reported seeing a pre-sunrise glow above the lunar horizon, which CU physics professor Mihaly Horanyi said may have been the product of dust particles on the light side of the moon being electrically charged by ultraviolet sunlight to the extent they were lofted above the surface.
If sunlight is affecting lunar electromagnetic fields, Horanyi said, it would be in humankind's best interest to learn more about it and how it might affect spacecraft before planning manned missions to the moon.
According to Horanyi, LDEX's lead investigator, the instrument has a hemispheric target that incoming dust particles will hit at speeds of 1.6 kilometers per second.
He said LDEX will produce an electrical signal based on the particles' properties and, "in some cases, when the particles are big enough, it may measure the charge they carry in space."
The instrument will also produce a signal when large quantities of tiny particles that would be too small to detect on their own strike the target, he said.
Horanyi was not at the Boulder launch party Friday because he and several other people who worked to build the instrument traveled to Virginia to watch the launch in person.
Anthony Rasca, a CU graduate student studying the interaction of cosmic dust with solar winds, stopped by the lab Friday night to support his fellow grad students.
"This was a huge deal for several people in my research group," Rasca said after a successful launch. "It was exciting to watch their years of work finally launched into lunar orbit."
Assistant CU physics professor Sascha Kempf provided observers at LASP with a short presentation about the purpose of the NASA mission and the LDEX instrument.
He said learning more about the origin and properties of dust on the surface of the moon could influence how future NASA instruments might be designed.
"Suppose you want to place a telescope on the moon. You would want to know how long it takes for a fine layer of dust to settle on the telescope," Kempf said. "The more you know, the better you can design the hardware for the moon."
After reaching the moon and settling into its orbit 60 days from now, the $280 million Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer probe will have a 100-day observation window before a controlled crash, according to NASA.
The spacecraft's mission includes gathering detailed information about the structure and composition of the thin lunar atmosphere, including searching for water molecules, and examining the properties of lunar dust, according to NASA's website.