Ask Butler Hine questions about LADEE

[nhnifong]

I've got the awesome opportunity to see Butler Hine (project manager of LADEE) give a talk to a small audience today, and I wanted to give you guys a chance to come up with a question for him

If you've got any awesome questions about LADEE, post them here and I'll ask Dr. Hine in about an hour.

Edited May 15, 2014 by nhnifong
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[NovaSilisko]

Spacecraft questions:

How much cost reduction did the use of a modular frame result in?

How much reduction could be expected for future missions using the same modular system?

How well did the laser communication system perform in practice vs expectations?

Mission questions:

Why was the spacecraft located in an equatorial orbit as opposed to a polar orbit?

Are there any followup missions being thought of? For example, a similar spacecraft to LADEE but with a secondary impactor, to provide a "control sample" of an impact-related dust plume for it to measure.

Does the lunar atmosphere seem to be more or less sensitive to human activity than was previously thought, given the near-complete lack of detection of Chang'e 3's landing?

[TechnicalK3rbal]

What happened to the frog when they launched it?

[nhnifong]

How well did the laser communication system perform in practice vs expectations?

It performed amazingly! Two interesting points were that it was capable of re-acquiring a signal on it's own after the first linkup without making use of the radio. Also it gave them two orders of magnitude improvement in ranging accuracy, measuring signal time of flight to within 100 picoseconds.

Does the lunar atmosphere seem to be more or less sensitive to human activity than was previously thought, given the near-complete lack of detection of Chang'e 3's landing?

No definitive evidence of Chang'e 3 was observed but this is primarily because the Chang'e 3 landing occurred during a light meteor shower which kicked up some dust. So the elevated dust levels were ambiguous.

Sorry I did not have time to ask all the questions!