OrbitalHub

ESA dixit:

“Could astronauts one day be printing rather than building a base on the Moon? In 2013 ESA, working with industrial partners, proved that 3D printing using lunar material was feasible in principle. Since then, work continues to investigate the technique. The shielding against radiation provided by a 3D-printed block of simulated lunar regolith was measured, providing important inputs for next-stage designs… Soon the Agency is due to investigate another lunar 3D printing method, harnessing concentrated sunlight to melt regolith rather than using a binding liquid.

But how might lunar 3D printing one day be used in practice? Foster+Partners, contributing architectural concepts for the original study, put together this outline of a hypothetical mission to 3D-print an entire a lunar base, illustrating the design factors that steered them in their work. The rim of Shackleton Crater at the lunar south pole was chosen for the base location. The Moon’s rotation is such that the Sun only grazes its poles at low angles. The result is a near-constant ‘peak of eternal light’ along the rim of Shackleton Crater, beside regions of permanent shadow. Building in the vicinity of such a site would offer plentiful solar power, and relief from the extremes of heat and cold found across the rest of the Moon.

In reality any lunar base remains firmly on the drawing board, but each small step forward in research makes future lunar colonisation a little more feasible. In November 2014 more than 350 experts came together for a two-day Additive Manufacturing for Space Applications workshop at ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. They discussed the potential of 3D printing – also known as Additive Manufacturing – to transform the way the space industry operates and begin preparing common standards for its use.”

Read more about 3D-printing using Lunar soil…

Credit: ESA/Foster+Partners

NASA dixit:

“The historic 1964 Ranger 7 mission was the first true success in the United States’ early quest to explore the moon.
The JPL-built spacecraft launched July 28. Three days later, it made a targeted impact on the moon, sending back more than 4,300 photos along the way.”

Credit: NASA

Credits: NASA

The Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) is a mission that will measure the lunar gravity field in unprecedented detail. The twin spacecraft will orbit the Moon in tandem and collect scientific data for several months.

The GRAIL mission will cost $375 million and launch in 2011 as part of NASA’s Discovery Program. The window for the launch is 26 days long and opens on September 8, 2011.

After a dual launch aboard a Delta II 2920-10, the spacecraft will spend three to four months cruising on a low-energy trans-lunar trajectory. The two spacecraft will orbit the moon on 50 km, near-circular polar orbits, with a spacecraft separation of 175 – 225 km. The science phase of the mission will take 90 days, and it will be followed by a 12-month science data analysis.

The technique used by GRAIL for collecting scientific data was also used for the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, launched in 2002. Small changes in the distance that separates the two spacecraft are translated in variations of the lunar gravity field.

The GRAIL spacecraft are based on the Lockheed Martin XSS-11 bus. The XSS-11 (Experimental Small Satellite 11) is the result of research done at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in the field of agile and affordable micro-satellites. Interesting to mention here is that there were speculations that XSS-11 could also be used as the base for the development of a kinetic anti-satellite weapon (ASAT).

The spacecraft is a rectangular composite structure. Two non-articulated solar arrays and lithium ion battery provides power. The attitude control system, the power management system, and the telecommunications system are also inherited from the XSS-11 bus.

The payload consists of a Ka-band Lunar Gravity Ranging System (LGRS), which is derived from the instrument carried by the GRACE spacecraft.

The spacecraft flight operations will be conducted from Lockheed Martin’s Denver facility. Science Level 0 and 1 data processing will be done at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Level 2 data processing at JPL, the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The final scientific data will be delivered by MIT.

While missions like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) will find safe landing sites, locate potential resources, and take measurements of the radiation environment of the lunar surface, GRAIL will explore the moon from crust to core, and determine the moon’s internal structure and evolution.

More information about GRAIL is available on the GRAIL mission page on MIT’s web site.

Courtesy of JAXA/NHK

On September 14th, 2007, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the second Japanese lunar explorer, Kaguya. Kaguya was launched by an H-IIA Launch Vehicle from the Tanegashima Space Center (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. has a special page dedicated to the H-IIA No. 13, which was the rocket used for the Kaguya mission).

Kaguya shared the journey to the Moon with two smaller satellites, Okina and Okuna. Once in lunar orbit, Kaguya released the small satellites on elliptical orbits around the Moon. Okina and Okuna play the role of orbiting radio transmitters, relaying the data from Kaguya back to Earth in real time when Kaguya is above the far side of the Moon.

Courtesy of JAXA/NHK

The instruments onboard the spacecraft have measured the composition and the topography of the lunar surface for more than one year.

Mapping of the lunar magnetic field was also performed.

The NHK HDTV cameras on Kaguya recorded stunning movies of the Earth rising and setting over the lunar surface. The movies are now available on JAXA’s web site.

Credits: NASA

In the previous two posts in this series, we presented NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Chandrayaan-1 mission, which was designed and developed by ISRO. These two missions are typical lunar scouting missions: the spacecraft with onboard remote-sensing instruments will orbit the Moon, collect scientific data, and relay it back to Earth.

NASA will launch another lunar scouting spacecraft on the same Atlas V rocket with LRO: the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). This mission is not a typical scouting mission and we will see why in this post.

In 1999, a precursor of LRO and LCROSS called the Lunar Prospector detected traces of concentrated hydrogen at the lunar poles. As a result, the LCROSS mission’s main goal is to confirm the presence or absence of water in a permanently shadowed crater near a lunar polar region. At the present time, landing a probe on the lunar surface and performing excavations or drilling would be very expensive. A less expensive solution for the LCROSS mission is to use a kinetic impactor to excavate a crater on the surface of the Moon.

Credits: NASA

After the launch, LRO will separate from LCROSS, and continue on a solo journey to the Moon. LCROSS will remain attached to the Centaur upper stage of the Atlas V launch system.

While LRO will follow a trajectory that will place it in a polar lunar orbit, LCROSS will execute a flyby of the Moon, and use an elongated Earth orbit to position itself on an impact trajectory. During this time, the LCROSS mission team will perform instrument calibration and corrections for the impact trajectory. The target of the impact will be the lunar south pole.

Seven minutes before the impact, LCROSS will separate from Centaur. The Centaur will be used as a kinetic impactor. Having a mass of approximately 2,200 kg, on impact, it will excavate a crater 20 meters wide and 3 meters deep. According to NASA scientists, more than 250 tons of lunar material will be propelled into space.

Credits: NASA

LCROSS will then fly through the debris of the previous impact. The instruments onboard LCROSS will collect scientific data and the spacecraft will relay it back to Earth. LCROSS will end its mission four minutes after the Centaur impact by creating its own impact crater on the lunar surface. The last S in LCROSS should stand for Smasher instead of Satellite considering the final act of the mission!

The scientific instruments onboard LCROSS cover a wide spectrum: two near-infrared spectrometers, a visible light spectrometer, two mid-infrared cameras, two near-infrared cameras, a visible camera, and a visible radiometer. The instruments can detect traces of organics, hydrocarbons, hydrated minerals, water ice, and water vapor. More details about the LCROSS scientific payload can be found on LCROSS mission page.

I wonder to what extent the debris caused by the impact of Centaur and LCROSS will interfere with the scientific instruments onboard LRO and Chandrayaan-1. Both LRO and Chandrayaan-1 will be orbiting the Moon on polar orbits at that time.

We presented in a previous post the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission. The goals of the LRO mission are to map the lunar resources and to create a detailed 3D map of the lunar surface in preparation for future NASA missions to the Moon. However, NASA is not the only space agency that has high hopes regarding the exploration of the Moon. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is another agency heavily involved in space activities.

Credits: ISRO

Interest in undertaking a lunar scientific mission was sparked at a meeting of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1999. One year later, the Astronautical Society of India made a recommendation supporting the idea.

The ISRO formed a National Lunar Mission Task Force that involved leading Indian scientists. The Task Force provided an assessment on the feasibility of such a mission. The mission, called Chandrayaan-1, was approved in November 2003 for an estimated cost of $83 million USD.

The Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft is a 1.5 meter cube with a weight mass of approximately 523 kg. The spacecraft bus is based on an already developed meteorological satellite. Chandrayaan-1 will carry a 30 kg probe that will be released to penetrate the lunar surface. The power for the onboard systems is generated by a solar panel. The 750 watts generated by the solar panel will be stored by the rechargeable batteries onboard the spacecraft. Maneuvering in the lunar orbit is done using a bipropellant propulsion system.

Credits: ISRO

The scientific payload contains a diverse collection of instruments. The instruments were designed and developed by ISRO, ESA, NASA, and the Bulgarian Space Agency.

There are two instruments that will map the surface of the Moon: the Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) will produce a 5 meter resolution map of the surface, and the Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument (LLRI) will scan the lunar surface and determine the surface topography.

The X-ray spectrometer onboard the spacecraft has three components: the Imaging X-ray Spectrometer (CIXS), the High Energy X-ray/gamma ray spectrometer (HEX), and the Solar X-ray Monitor (SXM). The X-ray spectrometer will measure the concentration of certain elements on the lunar surface as well as monitor the solar flux in order to normalize the results of the measurements taken.

The mineralogical configuration of the surface will be mapped by four instruments: the Hyper Spectral Imager (HySI), the Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer (SARA), the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), and the Near-Infrared Spectrometer (SIR-2).

The Radiation Dose Monitor (RADOM-7) will record the radiation levels in the lunar orbit.

Credits: ISRO

ISRO has two operational launch vehicles: the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV). For Chandrayaan-1, ISRO has chosen to use PSLV as a launch vehicle. The PSLV developmental flights were completed in 1996 and the rocket has had 12 successful missions since then. PSLV is 44.43 meters tall and has a weight of 294 tonnes at launch. It can inject a payload of 1,000 kg – 1,200 kg into a polar orbit.

The launch of the Chandrayaan-1 mission is scheduled for the end of October 2008. The PSLV rocket will take off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota on the southeast coast of India. The transfer to the lunar orbit will take approximately five days and after additional maneuvers the spacecraft will reach its final polar orbit, 100 km above the surface. The spacecraft will be operational for two years.

The Chandrayaan-1 mission opens the door to future lunar missions. ISRO has already committed to a second Chandrayaan mission that will land a rover on the surface of the Moon. The rover will perform a number of experiments on the lunar surface and the results will be relayed to Earth by the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter.

We will come back with more details about the Chandrayaan-1 mission as the events unfold. Please stay tuned on the OrbitalHub frequency.