AMIE - SMART 1
Advanced Moon micro-Imager Experiment
 |
SMART-1 has been the first of ESA's Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology thought with the purpouse of testing new technologies that will eventually be used on bigger projects. SMART-1 primary objective was to flight test Solar Electric Primary Propulsion. Another objective was to test new technologies for spacecraft and instruments. The planetary objective selected for the SMART-1 mission was to orbit the Moon for a nominal period of six months. The spacecraft was planned to carry out a complete programme of scientific observations in lunar orbit. SMART-1 was launched succesfully as an Ariane-5 auxiliary payload on 27 September 2003 and entered lunar orbit on 15 November 2004. Among SMART-1 on-board instruments there was the AMIE camera.
AMIE (Advanced Moon
micro-Imager Experiment) is an ultracompact electronic camera
able to survey the terrain using visible and near-infrared light. AMIE data will enable scientists to study the Moon's
topography and
surface
texture once again. It measures visible light at a million points in a
field of view 5 degrees wide, and filters can select yellow light, red
light or very short infrared rays. The SMART-1 mission
has
ended with a controlled
impact with the lunar surface. Impact occurred at 05:42.21.759 UT on 03
Sep. 2006.
Approximate impact coordinates are 34.4 S, 46.2 W on the edge of Lacus
Excellentiae. |
 AMIE Camera
Mission Ending: The Crash on The Moon  This
is an animation showing the
scene of the
impact from the exposure just before the impact to ~130s later (~10 images). Each image is a snapshot over 10s, with a gap of around 5s between exposure. The expansion of the dust cloud is clearly seen. The observations were made with the WIRCam wide-field infrared camera. Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope / 2006 |
| Scientific Background | ||
| SMART
1 Mission |
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