Question 1

True or false: Lunar Prospector was designed to detect water ice using a visible-light camera.

Accepted Answer

False. It had no camera. It used a neutron spectrometer and gamma-ray spectrometer to detect hydrogen and elements, not visible-light imaging.

Question 2

True or false: The mission discovered large amounts of frozen water at the Moon's poles.

Accepted Answer

True. Lunar Prospector's neutron spectrometer found strong evidence of hydrogen, likely water ice, in permanently shadowed polar craters.

Question 3

True or false: Lunar Prospector mapped the Moon's gravity field in unprecedented detail, revealing mass concentrations.

Accepted Answer

True. Correct. Its Doppler tracking data generated a high-resolution gravity map, identifying mascons (mass concentrations) under lunar basins.

Question 4

True or false: Lunar Prospector was the first NASA mission to orbit the Moon since the Apollo program.

Accepted Answer

False. Actually, Clementine (1994) orbited the Moon before Lunar Prospector (1998). Prospector was the third, after Clementine and Hiten.

Question 5

True or false: Lunar Prospector was intentionally crashed into the Moon to look for water ice.

Accepted Answer

True. Yes, in 1999, the probe was crashed into a permanently shadowed crater near the south pole, but no water plume was detected from Earth.

Question 6

True or false: Lunar Prospector carried a sample of the famous astronaut Gene Shoemaker's ashes to the Moon.

Accepted Answer

True. Yes, a capsule of Eugene Shoemaker's ashes was aboard. The probe deliberately crashed into the Moon, making him the first person buried on another world.

Question 7

True or false: The spacecraft used solar electric propulsion to reach the Moon.

Accepted Answer

False. Lunar Prospector used a solid-fuel rocket motor for its lunar orbit insertion, not solar electric propulsion, which was experimental at the time.

Question 8

True or false: Lunar Prospector discovered that the Moon has a small, molten iron core.

Accepted Answer

False. It did find evidence of a small core, but it was not determined to be molten. Later missions like GRAIL refined the core's state.

Lunar Prospector Trivia Questions