The
MoonLITE (Moon Lightweight Interior and Telecoms Experiment) project is a
proposed collaboration by the British government and NASA. A satellite would be
placed in orbit around the Moon carrying penetrator probes. These probes would
be dropped from orbit, penetrating the lunar crust. Readings from
shock-resistant instruments would be sent back to the orbiter, and then back to
Earth.
The MoonLITE
orbiting platform would consist of a large, high thrust propulsion system
and associated support structure, including communications and navigation
capabilities. Power would be provided by a single solar array. The platform
would communicate with the penetrators at data rates ranging from 200 bps to
3kbs.
According to the UK Space Board's Professor Keith Mason:
"This
joint report represents a milestone .... The [plans] provide an opportunity to
harness the UK's world-class expertise in small satellite, communication and
robotic technologies focused on exploration of the Moon ... the UK is fully exploiting and strategically maximising its technological and scientific
strengths in space exploration."
The primary science goals
of the program are summarized as follows:
- Constraining
the origin, differentiation, internal structure, and early geological
evolution of the Moon.
- Gaining a
better understanding of the origin and history of the volatile flux in the
Earth-Moon system.
- Collecting
of "ground truth" geochemical data for the calibration of orbiting
remote-sensing instruments.
- Collecting
in situ surface data that would help in the planning of future lunar
exploration activities.
Initially, the platform
would enter a 100 kilometer altitude circular orbit; it would come within 40
kilometers of the surface for deployment of penetrators. Following deployment,
the orbiter would move into a higher orbit to increase long-term orbit
stability.
The penetrator
deployment sequence proceeds as follows: after a free-fall of about 3.5
minutes, the Penetrator
Delivery System realigns itself to assure a near-vertical impact. The final
impact velocity is estimated at about 350 meters per second.
The penetrator instrument
package would include the following capabilities:
- Accelerometer/tilt
assembly
- Micro
Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS)- based microseismometer
- Pressure
sensors, impedance spectrometer, compact mass spectrometer
- Sample
collection and thermal control system is based on the drill and the
pyrotechnic sample volume sealing device based on NASA Deep Space 2.
- Thermal
sensors
- Geochemical
analysis
- Microscope
- Radiation
sensor
- Magnetometer
- Descent
camera.
The group believes that by
deploying instruments to a variety of carefully chosen locations never before
explored (including the poles and the lunar farside), MoonLITE penetrators have
the potential to make major contributions to lunar science. The mission would
also provide knowledge essenial to future human missions to the Moon, and
demonstrate technology that could be used elsewhere in the solar system.
In his 1958 novel The
Mechanical Monarch, EC Tubb writes about asteroid miners who want to
know the composition of asteroids prior to actually landing on them. They use a
projectile to
blow some material into vapor, and then use spectral analysis to determine
composition.
NASA has quite a number of
possible lunar projects on the table; see the plans to put Radio
Telescopes On Moon's Farside and even a Liquid
Mirror Telescope for the Moon.
From Joint Working Group Report on Lunar Cooperation via The Register.
(This Science Fiction in
the News story used with permission of Technovelgy.com
- where science meets fiction)
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