KSC-2009-1752

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – At Astrotech in Titusville, Fla., NASA's Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, known as LCROSS, is offloaded from the truck after its arrival from Northrop Grumman's facility in Redondo Beach, Calif. The satellite's primary mission is to search for water ice on the moon in a permanently shadowed crater near one of the lunar poles. LCROSS is a low-cost, accelerated-development, companion mission to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO. At Kennedy, the two spacecraft will be integrated with an Atlas V launch vehicle and tested for final flight worthiness. LCROSS and LRO are the first missions in NASA's plan to return humans to the moon and begin establishing a lunar outpost by 2020. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett