Lunar orbit

In astronomy, lunar orbit (also known as a Selenocentric orbit) refers to 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 the surface) for a lunar orbit is known as apolune, apocynthion or aposelene, while the periapsis (point closest to the surface) is known as perilune, pericynthion or periselene.

Low Lunar orbit (LLO)—orbits below 100 kilometres (62 mi) altitude—are of particular interest in exploration of the moon, but suffer from gravitational perturbation effects that make most unstable, and leave only a few orbital inclinations possible for indefinite frozen orbits, useful for long-term stays in LLO.

Robotic spacecraft

The Soviet Union sent the first spacecraft to the vicinity of the Moon, the robotic vehicle Luna 1, on January 4, 1959. It passed within 6,000 kilometres (3,200 nmi; 3,700 mi) of the Moon's surface, but did not achieve lunar orbit.Luna 3, launched on October 4, 1959, was the first robotic spacecraft to complete a circumlunar free return trajectory, still not a lunar orbit, but a figure-8 trajectory which swung around the far side of the Moon and returned to the Earth. This craft provided the first pictures of the far side of the Lunar surface.