Watch LADEE Launch Live!

By Nancy Atkinson - September 6, 2013 at 8:00 PM UTC | Missions

NASA's heading back to the Moon, and you can see the launch – either live with your own eyes if you live on the US Eastern Seaboard, or online here or on NASA TV. The mission is LADEE, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer. As of this writing, the spacecraft sits atop a Minotaur V rocket on Wallops Island, Virginia. Launch is scheduled for 11:27 p.m. EDT on September 6 (0327 UTC Sept. 7). If you live in a swath long the US East Coast that stretches from Naine to North Carolina, check out our

detailed information here of how you can see the nighttime launch for yourself

, weather permitting.

If you want to watch online, we've got NASA's UStream feed below, and all the online action starts Friday night at 9:30 p.m. EDT (0130 GMT, early Saturday.

Of course, if you have NASA TV on your cable or satellite lineup, you can watch on your television. Another option is that The Planetary Society is also have a live show starting an hour before launch

at their website.

Also the NASA EDGE team also will have a

webcast.

Live streaming video by Ustream

For those of you in the viewing area, if you get pictures of the launch, share them with us (and we may post them on UT!) on

our Flickr page.

Read more about LADEE

here

.

[caption id="attachment_104518" align="aligncenter" width="580"]

LADEE Minotaur V Launch – Maximum Elevation Map

The LADEE nighttime launch will be visible to millions of spectators across a wide area of the Eastern US -weather permitting. This map shows the maximum elevation (degrees above the horizon) that the Minotaur V rocket will reach during the Sep. 6, 2013 launch depending on your location along the US east coast. Credit: Orbital Sciences[/caption]

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com