Lunar orbit in a long-lasting orbit, at 28° inclination, and successfully completed its mission after one and a half years. PFS-2 was placed in a particularly unstable orbital inclination of 11°, and lasted only 35 days in orbit before crashing into the lunar surface. Lunar orbit In astronomy, lunar orbit (also known as a selenocentric orbit) is the orbit of an object around the Moon. As used in the space program, this refers not to the orbit of the Moon about the Earth, but to orbits by various manned or unmanned spacecraft around the Moon. The altitude at apoapsis (point farthest from
Earth orbit rendezvous of Project Gemini involving docking with the Agena target vehicle were designed partly to test the feasibility of this program. In the end, NASA employed the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous for the Apollo Program: a Saturn V would simultaneously lift both the Apollo Command and Lunar Modules into low Earth orbit, and then the Saturn V third stage would fire again (Trans-lunar injection) to send both spacecraft to the Moon. This mode had been revived for Project Constellation as the Earth Departure Stage (EDS) and Altair (LSAM), which would be launched into low Earth orbit on the Ares V rocket. The