Laser Ranging to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO): a Global Network Effort

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) will launch in early 2009 carrying multiple instruments for lunar study including the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center built Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA). Also part of the mission will be the Laser Ranging (LR) instrument, which consists of a 2 cm aperture receive telescope mounted on the High Gain Antenna and a fiber optic bundle from this aperture to one of the LOLA detectors. Laser Ranging to LRO is an uplink-only measurement where ground stations time-tag their laser fires and LOLA measures the receive times to better than 10 centimeter precision with subcentimeter resolution. This information will be used to improve the orbital knowledge which in turn will support the lunar gravity model development. While NASA's Next Generation Laser Ranging System (NGSLR) is the primary ground station for LR, multiple International Laser Ranging Service (ILRS) stations will also be supporting this historic mission, providing much better coverage than a single station could provide. Data from all of the participating ILRS stations will be sent to the LOLA Science Operations Center (SOC) where ground fire events will be matched with LOLA events and ranges produced. Coordination of the global effort will be at the Goddard Space Flight Center, where predictions and schedules will be created, data archived (CDDIS), and an LR science product generated (LOLA SOC).