For the first time, a spacecraft is to be launched from Virginia to the moon.
The launch is scheduled for Sept. 6 from NASA’s facility at Wallops Island on Virginia’s Atlantic coast.
If all follows the plan, and the clouds cooperate, the 11:27 p.m. launch should be visible in Washington and in much of the Northeast.The mission will not land on the moon, but it is intended to go into orbit around it.
The robotic mission is to collect detailed information about the moon’s thin atmosphere. Sometimes thought to be nonexistent, the lunar atmosphere has been described as extremely tenuous and fragile, but present.
