Clementine Imaging Node Mission Page

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Clementine

On January 25, 1994, the Deep Space Program Science Experiment (DSPSE), better known as Clementine, was launched from Vandenburg Air Force Base aboard a Titan IIG rocket, as a joint project between the and was jointly sponsored by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) of the Dept of Defense and NASA. The objective of the mission was to test sensors and spacecraft components under extended exposure to the space environment and to make scientific observations of the Moon and a near-Earth asteroid (1620 Geographos).

After two Earth fly-bys, lunar insertion was achieved on February 19th. Lunar mapping took place over approximately two months in two systematic mapping passes over the Moon. After the spectacular success of the Lunar mapping phase of the mission, Clementine suffered an on-board malfunction on May 7, 1994 that resulted in the activation of its altitude thrusters. This exhausted all the fuel for altitude control and left the spacecraft spinning at 80 revolutions per minute. The result of the malfunction prevented Clementine from performing the planned close fly-by of the near-Earth asteroid Geographos scheduled for August 1994.

The main instrumentation on Clementine consisted of four cameras, one with a laser-ranging system. The cameras included an ultraviolet-visual (UVVIS) camera, a long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) camera, the laser-ranger (LIDAR) high-resolution (HIRES) camera, and a near-infrared (NIR) camera. The spacecraft also had two star tracker cameras (A-STAR, B- STAR), used mainly for attitude determination, but they also served as wide-field cameras for various scientific and operational purposes.