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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Lunar Exploration _ Lunar Mission Medley

Posted by: MorrisJones Sep 16 2009, 10:40 PM

Hi, this is Morris Jones, a long-time lurker but new poster.
I thought it would be worth exploring a few lunar missions that don't seem to be discussed much at the moment. The exact fate of some of these missions is open to question. Let's see if we can work out what's going on.
International Lunar Network: This was announced with fanfare a few years ago. Little more has been generally discussed. The whole thing seems to be going through committee meetings, with a lot of details unresolved.
LADEE: Is this still on target? There were suggestions two years ago that cost overruns in the Mars Science Laboratory could gobble funds from this and other missions. This was later dismissed. Then MSL grew more hungry, and the subject was open to discussion again.
GRAIL: Not much more talk, but apparently still actively in development.
Luna-Glob: The recent delay in Phobos-Grunt could influence its own launch timetable.
American Student Moon Orbiter: The silence is deafening.
Reports on the status of any of these missions would be appreciated.
Cheers,
Morris

Posted by: Phil Stooke Sep 17 2009, 01:33 AM

Check out the presentations here:

http://lunarscience2009.arc.nasa.gov/agenda

The NASA missions you mention are near the bottom.

This upcoming meeting:

Annual Meeting of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group
November 15–19, 2009
Houston, Texas

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/leag2009/

Will be another source for updates on most of these missions. Luna-Glob obviously is a different matter but it and other upcoming missions might also be discussed there. The Student Moon Orbiter concept is not much more than that at the moment. Some suggestions are being considered...

Phil

Posted by: John Moore Sep 17 2009, 03:04 PM

Not to mention Artemis ~ 2010 - 2012 (American) , or Lunar Explorer Orbiter ~ 2015 - 2016 (Germany)

John
---------------
http://www.moonposter.ie/missions2.htm

Posted by: Phil Stooke Sep 17 2009, 03:07 PM

I understood the German mission was cancelled.

Phil

Posted by: MorrisJones Sep 17 2009, 10:58 PM

The German LEO orbiter was cancelled, but there are now proposals for a German lander. This is all tenative. Germany faces an election soon.

Artemis is based on Themis, which is a particles/fields constellation already in orbit. Themis looked at the interaction of the solar wind with Earth's exosphere. The proposal is to extend this to the lunar environment. Do we have anything firm on this mission yet?


Posted by: Phil Stooke Sep 17 2009, 11:15 PM

http://themis.ssl.berkeley.edu/news.shtml


"ARTEMIS P1 and P2 are the outermost two THEMIS probes, which commenced their low-thrust lunar orbit insertion maneuvers on July 20, 2009, slated to arrive at the moon in October 2010."


So they are on their way.

Phil

Posted by: MorrisJones Sep 18 2009, 04:52 AM

Canonical list of Upcoming Lunar Missions
By Morris Jones (September 2009)
2009 LCROSS impact (USA)
2010 ARTEMIS orbiters arrive in lunar orbit (USA)
2011 Chang'e 2 orbiter (China)
2011 GRAIL (USA)
2011? LADEE (USA)
2011? Astrobotic lander (Private) (?)
2011? Odyssey Moon lander (Private) (?)
2012 Chandrayaan 2 orbiter and lander/rover (India/Russia)
2012? Luna-Glob (Russia)
2013? Chang'e 3 lander and rover (China)
2014? MoonLITE (?)
2015? Chandrayaan 3 lander/sample return (India)
2015? International Lunar Network first nodes landed (USA)
2017 Chang'e 4 lander/sample return (China)

Additions, corrections, etc invited.

Posted by: kanarkusmaximus Sep 23 2009, 11:13 PM

Hello, I am another long-time lurker but new poster. smile.gif

As far as I know the ASMO student project very likely has been canceled or frozen, but I guess that it might be difficult to get any official confirmation.

The European counterpart - SSETI (in the past) and now 'pure' ESA Education Office ESMO - was many times delayed (due to many reasons, depending who you ask smile.gif ). Now, it is scheduled to be launched in 2012. Personally, I rather think that this date will move to even more distant future.

Unfortunately, in such projects the work is very often, if not always very slow. Many students come and go - and usually those who leave do not leave their knowledge and experience behind, leaving fresh new students as replacement, who often have to start from the beginning.

Probably you might ask from where do I know such information - so let me write that for few past years I have been active in some student projects (in Europe) and from time to time, during some meetings or chats some other students from different projects informed me and others about developments in their projects. smile.gif

Regards
Chris

Posted by: PhilHorzempa Dec 29 2009, 11:22 PM

Artemis Update - It seems that the P1 Artemis lunar orbiter (aka Themis P1) has successfully performed Lunar Flyby #1 a few weeks ago on December 8, 2009. This sets it up for Lunar Flyby #2 on January 31, 2010. The other Themis/Artemis lunar orbiter, P2, will require only one lunar flyby, and that will occur on March 28, 2010. Artemis has a Twitter occount for frequent updates -

http://twitter.com/ARTEMIS_NASA

In addition, here is the link to a very good summary of Themis and Artemis, including diagrams of the trajectories that P1 and P2 will take on their way to LOI for both probes in April 2011 -


http://www.igpp.ucla.edu/public/THEMIS/SCI/Pubs/Proposals%20and%20Reports/HP_SR_2008_THEMIS_SciTech_20080221.pdf

A great mission for lunar science and trajectory analysts!

Another Phil







Posted by: tedstryk Dec 30 2009, 05:28 AM

Here is another good source on this mission http://www.lpi.usra.edu/decadal/leag/KrishanKhuranav2.pdf

Posted by: Paolo Jan 17 2010, 04:01 PM

Article about LADEE in this week's Aviation Week:
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=awst&id=news/awst/2010/01/18/AW_01_18_2010_p25-196860.xml

Posted by: Drkskywxlt Jul 7 2010, 04:55 PM

Just heard a talk by Brian Morse, APL Program Manager for ILN/Robotic Lunar Lander. Basically the news is this...ILN is awaiting the decision and prioritization of the ongoing Decadal Survey. APL and MSFC are continuing technology development through the robotic lunar lander program. The recent announcement of the (still unfunded) Exploration Precursor Robotic Program could also see a lunar network or ISRU-type lander flying in the next 5 years.

The tall tent pole from a technology standpoint is getting the lander to keep operating and manage it's internal temperature during a 28 day long day/night cycle. So, the answer is some giant/heavy/expensive batteries or ASRGs. The weight of the batteries dictates larger/more expensive launch vehicles. Similarly, launching with ASRGs limits the launch vehicle to an Atlas 5 (the only nuclear-rated launch vehicle). That increases the cost of the mission. The Atlas 5 would actually have the capacity to launch 4 (!) ILN nodes at once. Falcon 9's would launch 2 of the battery powered nodes at once.

Posted by: mps Sep 17 2010, 09:21 AM

http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1918352/european_space_agency_planning_lunar_mission/index.html?source=r_space

Posted by: ilbasso Nov 2 2010, 04:19 PM

ARTEMIS update - both probes are now orbiting Earth-Moon Lagrange points per http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/27oct_artemis/ from NASA.

There's an http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcKRk3WdhT0 linked in the article which gives a very clear illustration of what an orbit of an L1 or L2 Lagrange point looks like, both from the perspective of a fixed Earth-Sun baseline and then from a viewpoint centered on the Moon.

Posted by: JohnVV Nov 3 2010, 09:09 AM

nice vid but what i would like to know is why they used the old historical Lunar Orbiter map at the end
time index 2:40 to 2:47
http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/LunarConsortium/browse/sr_simp.htm

PS this map has been on my mind
there was a discovery chan. show ,two days ago, on LRO( old prelaunch) that used this map from the `70's

Posted by: gwiz Jun 6 2011, 01:11 PM

Anyone know what the current status of the two ARTEMIS probes is? They were originally supposed to go into lunar orbit in April, but that was postponed, possibly until July.

What was the reason for the postponement?

Is July still on?

Posted by: gwiz Jun 27 2011, 09:15 AM

QUOTE (gwiz @ Jun 6 2011, 02:11 PM) *
Anyone know what the current status of the two ARTEMIS probes is? They were originally supposed to go into lunar orbit in April, but that was postponed, possibly until July.

What was the reason for the postponement?

Is July still on?

This link answers some of my questions, it is indeed July:
http://www.universetoday.com/87044/artemis-spacecraft-curlicuing-their-way-to-lunar-orbit/

Posted by: Paolo Nov 13 2020, 09:30 AM

the Surveyor 2 Centaur upper stage returns to the vicinity of Earth
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7783

JPL has also gifted us with a nice picture of an unflown Surveyor Mark II lander in the press release
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/earth/20201112/E-surveyor-2-model-1041.jpg

Posted by: Phil Stooke Nov 14 2020, 12:11 AM

Thanks, Paolo. And looking back 9 years to the previous post about ARTEMIS - now they call it THEMIS-ARTEMIS to distinguish it from the human Artemis missions - well, the two little spacecraft are still in lunar orbit and (as far as I know right now) still operating. I was in touch with the PI not long ago, and he told me they were still planning several years of operations and were reserving fuel for de-orbiting at the end of the mission.

Phil

Posted by: Marz Dec 2 2020, 06:45 PM

Lunar Trailblazer is confirmed for final design, schedule and budget with targeted launch for Feb 2025. Its objective is mapping and characterizing water sources for surface features less than 100 square meters and is considered a support mission for Artemis.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7794

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