I don’t know that I’d ever heard anything of our Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission before this weekend.  See here to learn all about it.

What brought it to my attention was this story about how the mission has found a Soviet lunar rover, missing since it stopped transmitting eleven months into its own mission nearly forty years ago.  Just finding the thing is totally cool — but now we’re using it to bounce lasers off the moon, and its performance in this regard is surprisingly good.  Which may eventually help us understand more about lunar conditions.  Amazing.