LRO development Options

[Rakhir]

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Successfully Completes Critical Design Review

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/t...06/lro_cdr.html

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

NASA Moon-Impactor Mission Passes Major Review
RELEASE: 07-21
February 2, 2007

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

From the February 12, 2007, issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology:

Bush Budget Analysis
Lunar Robots May Cover NASA Budget Shortfall
Aviation Week & Space Technology
02/12/2007, page 32

Frank Morring, Jr.
Washington

Pending Senate action makes NASA budget academic. Lunar robots already targeted.

Robots that NASA plans to send as early scouts for humans on the Moon could wind up as the "bill payer" for International Space Station resupply costs after the space shuttle retires. The need will be particularly acute during a space-access gap that may be extended by proposed cuts in the agency's Fiscal 2007 spending.

Spaceflight managers must find some $900 million in station-supply savings through Fiscal 2011, the first year after the shuttle's planned September 2010 standdown. If they can't, funding for robotic lunar-precursor missions will be tapped to make up the difference, says Administrator Michael Griffin.

[...]

Griffin says protecting development of [Orion and Ares I] will be the top priority as NASA prepares its Fiscal 2007 operating plan (AW&ST Jan. 15, p. 418). Beyond that, the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate places high value on mapping the Moon for future explorers starting with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), set for launch next year. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite that will ride piggyback on LRO to an impact at the Moon's south pole may reveal water ice or other volatiles there (AW&ST Apr. 17, 2006, p. 26).

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

For those who haven't seen them, there are some really interesting presentations at the LRO Project Library. Be sure to check out some of the LRO Project Science Working Group (PSWG) presentations.

EDIT: See also the latest issue of The Planetary Report.

This post has been edited by AlexBlackwell: Feb 14 2007, 01:48 AM

[PhilHorzempa]

Check out the LRO's new Assembly Update of April 24, 2007 -

http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/042407.html


On that page, there is a link to a Hardware Gallery of images.

The first signs that the LRO is coming to life!



Another Phil

[dvandorn]

Kewl! You just don't know how much I'm looking forward to seeing what LRO comes up with. I have a deep and abiding interest in selenology. Comes from having been 13 years old in the summer of 1969, I think... *grin*...

Thanks for the link, Phil!

-the other Doug

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

A new LRO-related paper:

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Overview: The Instrument Suite and Mission Status
Gordon Chin et al.
Space Sci. Rev., In Press, 2007
DOI 10.1007/s11214-007-9153-y
Published online May 4, 2007
1.8 Mb PDF

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

LRO Participating Scientist Opportunity Announced (75 Kb PDF)
June 2007

[Del Palmer]

Goddard have unveiled a new antenna farm at White Sands that will support LRO:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/t...07/ka-band.html

The antennas use glue instead of bolts! The future of the DSN?

[djellison]

$20m for 3 new 18m dishes - but assuming a scaling of the third dish costing half as much as the second which cost half as much as the first ish... perhaps only $3m each for future dishes

250 sq m

70m dish is about 15,400

61 dishes - call it $200m for a 70m class array...maybe. With HUGE flexibility.

Doug

[elakdawalla]

I can't wait to see these arrays come online. They have so many advantages over the large dishes for deep-space communication. You can choose how big an aperture you need to support a communications session and just use some of the dishes, reserving the rest for a simultaneous communications session with a different spacecraft. You can always have some fraction of them offline for routine maintenance without affecting communications schedules. If they're built to a common design, they'll be cheaper to maintain.

A question: three 18-meter dishes is equivalent to one dish of what size? Does it scale directly to the area, so that the three-dish array is equivalent to one 31-meter dish?

--Emily

[djellison]

I assume it scales with area, but there's probably a proviso regarding losses when combining the antennae - I'm not sure how much that is though.

http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstre...5/1/05-0738.pdf

http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstre...4/1/06-2024.pdf

Some help - but not definitive on how well it actually scales.

Doug

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

NASA's Lunar Orbiter Mission Could Slip

http://www.space.com/news/071212-nasa-moon-plans.html

[djellison]

Aghgh - I hate headlines that use something that MIGHT happen, as fact.

Doug

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter:
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2004/dec/H...ar_orbiter.html

The angular resolution of LROC imager will be about 50 cm/pixel (dependent on the final orbit of course). With this resolution it will definitely be possible to spot the Apollo hardware such as Lunar Module descent stages and the 3 Rovers."