The Moon's Orbit will be Destablized by TransOrbital

> Six in the Lunar Orbiter series, during the 1960's,
> each
> impacted the Moon at end of mission.
>
> Also, Lunar Prospector, Clementine-1 (?) and the
> Japanese Orbiter (Hiten?)(did it impact).
Clementine-1 got stuck in a geocentric orbit and was
left there. Hiten was left in a circumlunar orbit.
Lunar Prospector was not listed as impacting the moon
but if I remember correctly, was it the one they
smashed into the south pole to watch the impact?

Plus
> there
> was an Explorer orbiter in the 1980's some time
> which
> probably impacted.
>
Neither nasa nor astronautix shows this.

> As well as the Apollo LEM Descent stages, we should
> add
> the Apollo LEM Ascent stages, which mostly impacted
> the
> Moon, and the S-IVb stages of Apollo-13 through -17.

NASA's website does not talk about what happened to
these stages. If you can find me some lit on these, I
will include them.

>
> Also, there were some Soviet Luna orbiters,
> specifically
> Luna-10 through -12 which I believe all impacted the
>
> Moon, and probably Luna-14, -19 and -21 also.
>
> And remember Luna-15 in July 1969 which impacted in
> Mare
> Crisium (a dramatic failed attempt to recover moon
> rock
> samples before Apollo-11).

Did some digging at nasa's web site for luna:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunarussr.html
It lists each of the luna missions which actually
impacted the moon and while it doesn't say where they
went when they were done, the Luna 10-12, 14 and 19
were not listed as impacting. Luna 15 was so I've
added it. Luna 21 only landed a rover and a lander,
so I've readjusted their weights to 1814 kg instead of
the total weight of 4850 kg. For alot of these
missions, they do not seperate out what stayed and
what left so its hard to get accurate numbers. For
example luna 20 was actually a successful sample
return mission, so what was left behind i've no clue
as of yet. I'll keep looking though and tweaking the
list.

> Did the Apollo-10 LEM stages impact the Moon ?

According to NASA, the LEM seperated, ran some tests.
Went within 8 miles of the moon and then redocked with
apollo-10.
(http://cass.jsc.nasa.gov/expmoon/Apollo10/Apollo10.html)
>
> Apollo-15 through -17 each ejected sub-satellites
> which
> probably impacted the Moon also.

Only apollo 16's satellite (36 kg) impacted the moon
according to info I gleamed from astronautix.

>
> Most of the weight info for these should be
> available on
> www.astronautix.com
astronautix is a good supplemental to NASA's archives,
thanx for reminding me about it :)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Charles F. Radley
>
When I get some free time, I'll try to post this info
on the web somewhere.

Ryan Zelnio