session 8

Title

Hitchhiking to the Moon

Description

The next few decades involve a dramatically increased interest in lunar exploration for the purpose of developing a permanent human and robotic presence on the Moon, both for science and space exploration objectives. This renewed interest is broad and international, involving space agencies from the USA, Europe, China, India, Japan, Russia, Germany, England, and others. Recently, ISRO’s Chandrayaan spacecraft offered its platform as an opportunity to fly international instruments to the Moon; NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft provided an opportunity for a secondary payload to the Moon, in the form of the LCROSS lunar impactor mission. In the future, it is expected that there will be more opportunities for ride-sharing or secondary or tertiary payload opportunities to be flown to the Moon. This session provides a forum for the exchange of ideas for such small payloads to be demonstrated at the Moon, by ‘Hitch-hiking a ride’ to the Moon. Examples of such payloads or missions include: micro-spacecraft orbiters, CubeSats, small probes, penetrators, micro-landers, hard-landers, micro-rovers, secondary payload surface science instruments, distributed network landers, and many more. The focus of this session is on mission concepts, technology readiness and ride-sharing requirements.

Date

2008-10-03

Time

10:00

Room

Castle 3

IPC members

• Chairman: Dr. Leon Alkalai, Mandala Space Ventures, United States;

• Chairman: Prof. Jeng-Shing (Rock) Chern, International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), Canada;