NASA spacecraft to fly Russian equipment

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- The U.S. and Russian space agencies announced an agreement Wednesday for NASA spacecraft to fly Russian instruments to the moon and Mars.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration chief Michael Griffin and the head of the Russian Federal Space Agency, Anatoly Perminov, signed the agreement in Moscow.

NASA will add the Russian instruments to two missions: the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, scheduled to launch next October, and the Mars Science Laboratory, an advanced robotic rover scheduled to launch in 2009.

Russia's Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will search for evidence of water ice and map concentrations of hydrogen that might be found on and just beneath the lunar surface.

The orbiter will circle the moon for at least a year, obtaining various measurements including those necessary to identify future robotic and human landing sites.

Russia's Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons instrument on the Mars Science Laboratory will measure hydrogen to analyze neutrons interacting with the Martian surface.

The principal investigator for both Russian instruments is Igor Mitrofanov of the Institute for Space Research in the Russian Academy of Science.