LRO development Options

[jamescanvin]

Just read this interesting article about LRO

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/28apr_lro.htm

"This is the first in a string of missions," says Gordon Chin, project scientist for LRO at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "More robots will follow, about one per year, leading up to manned flight" no later than 2020."

One per Year? Is this just wishful thinking or have any tentitve plans been mentioned for follow up missions after LRO? If the next one is going to be 2009/10 then I guess some desisions about it will have to be made fairly soon.

James

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

I've dug up some more on this. It turns out I was wrong; they HAVE decided to go for MSFC's huge, hulking lunar lander that will weigh 10,000 kg on launch and 4500 on landing and be able to carry up to 3500 kg payload -- the reason being that they hope to used the same lander design later on as an unmanned resupply lander for human expeditions, "a lunar equivalent of the Russian Progress vehicle". And it will use an RL-10 engine with a 1:10 throttle range. The mission cost is projected at about $750 million.

There's still quite a lot of flexibility in the details -- but the landing site, at least, seems to have been pretty firmly settled on: a 1 x 5 km eternally sunlit spot on the rim of Shackleton Crater near the south pole, which is about as rugged as the Apollo 16 landing site. The crater itself, whose permanently dark slopes seem to run to a maximum of about 30-35 degrees, will likely be explored by a rover dispatched from the lander and based generally on the Apollo rover design, which seems capable of handling such slopes -- although it's possible that a propulsive hopper may be substituted. The rover will use RTGs to recharge batteries for peak loads (although it's possible that the RTGs will recharge fuel cells instead, since there's a desire to use this mission to test as much of the manned-landing paraphernalia as possible), and it will navigate in the dark using high-resolution lidar, as we thought. Its main function will be not only to look for water ice and other frozen volatiles in the soil, but to actually test the ability to extract them from the soil and turn the water into usable H2 and O2.

Meanwhile, the main lander -- which will use a descent camera and scanning lidar to create a very detailed map of its landing area for possible later use by manned crews -- will also run some experiments having to do with the general mechanical consistency and overall composition of the local soil, and it will also carry the first navigation beacon for the guidance of later manned crews to the same spot. It will also likely carry some biological experiments to test the effects of prolonged 1/6 G (and lunar-level radiation) on living things -- and, since all this will still leave it and the rover with a huge unused payload capability, they will likely carry some experiments paid for by commercial businesses, and maybe even a little equipment such as solar arrays for the later use of manned expeditions. Finally, the decision has been made to have the craft release a comsat/navsat into a 2000-km polar orbit before landing to allow constant contact of both the lander and the rover with Earth -- and that excess payload capacity could allow it to carry as many as 3 additional such satellites to complete the network needed for manned expeditions.

Where'd I find all this out? Well, partly from RLEP-2's very preliminary official webpage ( http://sms.msfc.nasa.gov/vp40.html ), Aviation Week's November article ( http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/chan...s/LUNA11155.xml ), and Doug Cooke's december letter announcing the initial choices made about the mission ( http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=18919 ) -- but mostly from the very helpful DigitalSpace page on the October LEAG-SSR Conference ( http://www.digitalspace.com/presentations/leag-ssr-2005/ ), and its links both to Mark Borkowski and Paul Spudis' talks on the mission ( http://www.digitalspace.com/presentations/...kowski-rlep.mp3 ; http://www.digitalspace.com/presentations/...dis-rlep-qa.mp3 ), and to some of their slides ( http://www.digitalspace.com/presentations/...lep2/index.html ). Unfortunately, there's no slide of the rover's strawman payload -- but one abstract at this year's STAIF conference mentions in passing that the "RESOLVE" package has been already selected as one of RLEP-2's experiments (which must be on the rover), and there's a nice description of that included in http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/leag2005/.../01_sanders.pdf (pg. 19-21).

And that's all I've been able to dig up so far. How much of this -- if any -- will actually fly, God knows; but they do seem to have a firm idea at this point of what they want to do at an absolute minimum.

[Jim from NSF.com]

they HAVE decided to go for MSFC's huge, hulking lunar lander that will weigh 10,000 kg on launch and 4500 on landing and be able to carry up to 3500 kg payload -- the reason being that they hope to used the same lander design later on as an unmanned resupply lander for human expeditions, And it will use an RL-10 engine with a 1:10 throttle range.

The use of LH2 and LO2 will cause issues for whom ever flies this lander. Launch pads are not set up to supply cryos to spacecraft. Add a couple more $100M for pad mods. I doubt it will fly on a CLV since it will need an3rd stage

[Jim from NSF.com]

The use of LH2 and LO2 will cause issues for whom ever flies this lander. Launch pads are not set up to supply cryos to spacecraft. Add a couple more $100M for pad mods. I doubt it will fly on a CLV since it will need an3rd stage

As I said before, use of an RL-10 will cause headaches for whomever flys it. More than an RTG.