Clementine (spacecraft)

Clementine ( Eng. Clementine ) - the joint mission of 1994 of the Command of the aerospace defense of North America and NASA to test military technologies and the parallel work of detailed photography of the lunar surface ^[1] .

Clementine
Deep Space Program Science Experiment (DSPSE)
Customer	BMDO / NASA
Satellite	The moon
Launch pad	Vandenberg SLC4W
Carrier rocket	Titan II SLV 23G-11
Launch	January 25, 1994 16:34:00 UTC
Flight duration	115 days
Number of turns	360
NSSDC ID	1994-004A
SCN	22973
Specifications
Weight	227 kg
Power	360 watts
Orbit elements
Eccentricity	0.36
Mood	90 °
Period of treatment	5 o'clock
Apocenter	4594 km
Pericenter	2162 km

AMC "Clementine" transmitted about 1.8 million images of the lunar surface to Earth. Some pictures of this mission caused controversy and speculation among the scientific and near-scientific community ^[2] .

“Clementine” is the first AMC that transmitted scientific data confirming the hypothesis of the presence of water at the poles of the moon ^[3] .

The AMC "Clementine" was launched into circumlunar orbit on February 19 and left it on May 4, 1994 with the aim of further flight to the asteroid (1620) Geographer . But the failure of the onboard computer on May 7, 1994 did not allow the re-approach to the Moon and direct the AMC to the target.

Composite images of the Moon according to the AMC "Clementine", from left to right: rotation 0 ° (visible side), 90 °, 180 ° ( back side ), 270 °

Gravitational map of the moon according to the mission "Clementine"