A decade ago, an Atlas V rocket blazed across a bright and clear Florida sky to mark the 21st century's first major lunar rendezvous. Onboard was a very special payload, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The mission would be one small step to return humans to the moon.
"The LRO came out of the return to the moon initiative, which was a vision for space exploration announced by then President (George W.) Bush, said Mark Robinson, Arizona State University professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration. "This was shortly after the Columbia accident, and NASA was reassessing — what are we doing, where are we going?"
"At that point in time, around 2003 and 2004, the shuttles were approaching 25 years in age, and they knew they had to rethink what NASA was doing. The space station was under construction, the shuttles were getting old, and at the time, the Bush administration pushed NASA and Congress to return to the moon."
The main idea was to survey the moon with the instruments onboard the LRO, gathering critical data to support humans' first return to the moon since the 1970s. Each LRO instrument was manned by a team to scan the lunar surface for new insights on where to go first.
"It was very exciting," Robinson said. "It was kind of like going back to Apollo after doing the shuttle. And NASA was charged with making a new heavy launch vehicle that could put enough mass in lower Earth orbit to get astronauts to the moon. We had to do a new rocket and new spacecraft to get to the moon. But at this time, it wasn’t just to the moon. It was to the moon and then to Mars. That was called the Constellation Program."
Full-resolution detail from one of the first LROC NAC images, published July 2, 2009. At this scale and lighting, impact craters dominate the landscape. Image width is 1,400 meters; north is down.
Image by NASA/GSFC/ASU
Tucked onboard the maiden 2009 voyage of the LRO, along with six other sophisticated science instruments, was the ASU-led eyes of the orbiter, called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC).
"The LRO is the spacecraft that LROC got a ride to the moon on," said Robinson, the lead LROC scientist whose proposal was chosen by NASA. Robinson thought part of the ASU proposal success was to give NASA more bang for the buck by including more than one kind of camera.
"LROC sounds like one camera, but it’s actually three cameras," Robinson said. "There are two identical narrow angle cameras which are very high resolution. We can actually see the tracks left behind by the astronauts, to give you a feel for what high resolution means. There another small camera, called the wide angle camera, and it images the moon, with each pixel about the size of a football field. It pictures the moon in seven different colors: two UV bands and then five visible bands. From that, we’ve mapped out mineral abundance and learned a lot about ages of the surface of the moon."
With a near and far-ranging view of the moon, once in its comfortable orbit (30 miles from the surface at 3,600 mph!), the LROC team could snap away to their heart's content. The very first images were published on July 2, 2009, marking its 10th anniversary this summer. It would be the first of more than a million images taken and carefully curated by the team, with a huge outreach effort to make them available for the public to explore on the LROC website. Among the site's many features are interactive maps of all of the Apollo landing sites.
Video by Ken Fagan/ASU Now
For Robinson and his LROC team, the mission has coalesced and culminated scientific career interests in lunar exploration, geology and remote sensing — and given them back far more than they may have first anticipated.
He and his team have used LROC to retrace mankind's first steps on the moon and have seen grand vistas, huge impact craters, ancient lava flows and evidence of icy deposits across its pockmarked surface. They have seen thousands of georgeous, high-resolution images, mapped future human and robotic landing sites and revealed images so stunning that they’ve been displayed in museums across the nation, from local hipster First Friday art galleries to the Smithsonian Institute.
Tom Watters, curator of a 2016 Smithsonian Museum exhibit that featured 61 LROC images at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., at the time called Robinson “the Rembrandt of capturing just the right kind of lighting.”
Fifty years ago, the world was stunned with images of "Earthrise" taken from Apollo 8 as it slingshotted itself around the dark side of the moon. Seeing our tiny blue dot from a new lunar perspective helped spawn the environmental movement. LROC sees 12 Earthrises every day.
They have seen more features on the far side of the moon, which is a completely different world geologically from our daily view from Earth of the nearside. Unlike the nearside, on the far side there are no maria, the seas of smooth basaltic rock (such as the famous "Sea of Tranquility" where Apollo 11 landed) made from ancient lava flows. Instead, the far side is chock-full of battered, highlands crusts, marring jolts of huge impact craters and deep canyons from a mysterious impact long ago.
Some of these areas remain permanently shadowed, which Robinson hopes to overcome with a next-generation instrument called Shadowcam. It is approximately 200 times more sensitive than the current narrow-angle LROC camera and will allow scientists to see these regions surrounding the moon's poles, which are hydrogen-rich regions thought to be covered with ice pockets tucked deep inside the craters.
This gorgeous Earthrise photo, with a cratered moon in the foreground, was taken in October 2015 by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter using onboard cameras operated by ASU. Every day, the cameras onboard the lunar orbiter see several Earth rises. Here, a full Earth straddles the edge of the moon, as seen from lunar orbit above Compton crater in the foreground.
Photo courtesy of NASA/GSFC/ASU
The far side of the moon, stitched together from images taken from LROC.
Photo courtesy of NASA/GSFC/ASU
The deeply impacted south pole may be a prime spot for future human exploration due to its permanently shadowed regions that are rich in hydrogen and may even harbor water ice deposits.
Photo courtesy of NASA/GSFC/ASU
The crater Giordano Bruno is a favorite of lunar scientists due to its relatively young age and the amazing impact melt features found within and without the crater walls.This image uses a 57 cm per pixel Narrow Angle Camera frame to highlight the details of a giant swirl (or whorl) of impact melt within one of the larger impact melt pools inside Giordano Bruno.
Photo courtesy of NASA/GSFC/ASU
This image shows four "faces" of the 21 km wide, south pole Shackleton Crater from four different LRO instruments.In the upper left is a topography map of the crater interior, the upper right image shows the visible lighting conditions, the lower right image is a lighting map (brighter is longer periods of illumination) from the LROC. The lower left image is a radar image.
Photo courtesy of NASA/GSFC/ASU
In the lower right, South Massif casts a long evening shadow across the mare basalt flooded Taurus Littrow valley, the site of the Apollo 17 landing.
Photo courtesy of NASA/GSFC/ASU
This image highlights an unnamed small crater (roughly 180 m in diameter) located at the northern edge of Mare Fecunditatis, near the crater chain known as Catena Taruntis. The strong reflectance contrast between the ejecta deposit and the surrounding background in the opening image suggests that this crater is still very flesh and young.
Photo courtesy of NASA/GSFC/ASU
With more than 60 space agencies worldwide now, they're also excited to join forces to aid each new lunar endeavor. More recently, they've been tracking the progress of the Chinese rover Yutu, as it tracks along the surface. But they've also seen their share of failure. They were the first to see images of the Israeli lander Beresheet, which was lost when it crashed into the moon.
"Yeah, we found its impact site," said Robinson. "That’s how good our resolution is, we can actually see spacecraft landing on the surface. But unfortunately, we imaged an impact scar.
"Along the sames lines of impact scars on the moon, since we have been in orbit for 10 years, we’re able to retake pictures. The reason is because impact craters are always forming on the moon. So far, we have discovered 500 new impact craters. The biggest one is about the size of a football field. We have also discovered tens of thousands of smaller ones. These are splotches from when bigger craters form because we find them in clusters and they are aligned pointing back to some of these newer craters we found."
Despite more than a million images taken, Robinson still revels in what his LROC team can reveal on a daily basis. And now, 10 years later, the discoveries made from LRO, and what ASU's LROC has seen, may very well pave the way to return again with the first 21st century human exploration of the moon, Mars and perhaps even further beyond before the century closes.
Recently, with NASA and commercial endeavors like Blue Origin revealing big plans to return to the moon as early as this coming decade, Robinson is hoping ASU will continue to play a major role being the watchful eyes from above to propel the next generation of human and robotic exploraton.
"Your big constraint whenever you are on the moon, or if you are on Mars — it doesn’t really matter — is the amount of time you have. And it’s precious. Because you’ve got only so much oxygen, only so much power, and you can only stay for a certain amount of time, and so you want to be as efficient as possible. And that was really the goal of LROC, where can we go to do science, and also look for ore bodies.
"We are really trying to determine the best place to land. Then we can use the incredible, high-resolution of the narrow angle camera to actually pick where to land safely and how to get to a landing site from a rover to the more interesting areas both safely and using the least amount of fuel."
In the 20th century, it took 66 years to go from the first flight of the Wright brothers to the moon landing. And perhaps, this century, we will witness space tourism and human moon travel making that same giant leap.
"It’s really amazing," Robinson said. "The original mission was only supposed to last for 3 years, and now we are in our 10th year, and we are still returning incredibly useful science data."
Today’s global environment requires quick, collaborative, creative thinkers who can disrupt the status quo and deliver results. It requires global leaders who call for innovation at every level of their organization. And it requires the leadership and management training that will prepare those global leaders for success.How do you find that type of education? One way is to check a school’s ac...
Thunderbird School of Global Management awarded prestigious reaccreditation from AACSB
June 27, 2019
Today’s global environment requires quick, collaborative, creative thinkers who can disrupt the status quo and deliver results. It requires global leaders who call for innovation at every level of their organization. And it requires the leadership and management training that will prepare those global leaders for success.
How do you find that type of education? One way is to check a school’s accreditation. Download Full Image
The ThunderbirdThe Thunderbird School of Global Management is the world’s premier global leadership and management school empowering professionals across sectors with global mindsets and skillsets capable of leveraging the Fourth Industrial Revolution to advance sustainable and inclusive prosperity worldwide. School of Global Management has just earned reaccreditation for a standard five-year extension by AACSB International, the premier accrediting agency for bachelor's, master's and doctoral degree programs in business-related fields. The school has been AACSB accredited since 1994.
Founded in 1916, AACSB International is the longest serving global accrediting body for business schools that offer undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees in business and accounting. AACSB International (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) accreditation is the hallmark of excellence in business education and has been earned by just 845 business institutions in 56 countries and territories — fewer than 5% of the world's business programs.
“To earn and maintain an AACSB accreditation is a remarkable achievement, recognizing academic excellence and a commitment to continuous improvement,” said Sanjeev Khagram, director general and dean of Thunderbird School. “Business and management schools can be a force for good, contributing to a prosperous, inclusive world’s economy and to planetary sustainability. AACSB is a hallmark of excellence and helps spread that message to a wide range of stakeholders — students, alumni, global business and society at large.”
Rigorous review
To earn and sustain business accreditation, an institution’s program is required to undergo a rigorous review and evaluation process.
During the accreditation process, a team of business and management school deans with substantial knowledge of business education and accreditation standards visit the school and evaluate the program.
Thunderbird’s review was based on 15 business accreditation standards organized into four categories:
Strategic management and innovation.
Participants — students, faculty and professional staff.
Learning and teaching.
Academic and professional engagement.
The standards are built around the three themes of engagement, innovation and impact. These themes are integrated throughout the standards to challenge and assist schools in striving for continuous quality improvement.
Continuous improvement
“As part of ASU, Thunderbird is in a unique position to expand our ability to excel in global engagement, innovation and impact. Transdisciplinary partnerships across ASU’s campus give us the opportunity to add significant breadth and substance to Thunderbird’s programs,” said Dean Khagram, who met with AACSB’s peer review team to walk them through the many Thunderbird programs that bear the hallmark of excellence for global leadership education. Representatives of faculty, staff, students, alumni and strategic partners from the industry also participated in the peer review interviews.
The fundamental purpose of AACSB accreditation is to challenge business educators to pursue excellence and continuous improvement in their business programs. AACSB achieves this purpose by defining a set of rigorous criteria and standards, coordinating peer reviews and consultation and recognizing high-quality business schools.
AACSB’s business standards have continued to be revised to ensure quality and continuous improvement in collegiate business education throughout the years.
“This level of accreditation places Thunderbird’s management education among the most prestigious in the world,” said Mary Teagarden, associate dean of faculty and administration and professor of global strategy. “This reaccreditation tells the world that we really are on the cutting edge in our faculty and programs. Yet, it also comes with a challenge. We know that the standards constantly evolve and so will Thunderbird.”
