Mission Design and Operations Considerations for NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
- Paper number
IAC-07-C1.7.06
- Author
Mr. Martin Houghton, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/Goddard space Flight Center, United States
- Coauthor
Mr. Craig Tooley, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/Goddard space Flight Center, United States
- Coauthor
Mr. Richard Saylor, Jr, United States
- Year
2007
- Abstract
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) will be the first lunar orbiting platform to orbit the moon for an entire year at a mean altitude of just 50 km above the lunar surface. This will provide an unprecedented opportunity to look into the lunar landscape at resolutions and over time scales never achieved before. Getting LRO into its mission orbit and operating it there for an entire year poses many mission design and operations challenges. Several key considerations drive various aspects of the LRO mission design and operations concepts. LRO will carry 6 science instruments and 1 technology demonstration into lunar orbit, all with their own accommodation needs and constraints. LRO is using two standard data busses (1553 and SpaceWire) to support the various requirements, and its on-board data storage and downlink systems, along with its ground station network and systems, are sized to handle the unprecedented amount of data that LRO’s instruments will generate over the course of its one year mission. LRO is using a Ka-band communication system for primary science data downlink. Once in lunar orbit, LRO’s orbit plane will be fixed in inertial space. The sun and earth will appear to move around the orbit plane over the course of the mission. LRO has specific science objectives that drive it to a particular initial orbit plane orientation. These drive the launch window and constrain it such that there are 2 windows each month, each lasting 2-3 days with 1 launch opportunity each day. LRO is following a direct, minimum energy transfer to the moon, culminating in a critical lunar orbit insertion burn about 5 days after launch. LRO’s systems are designed to offer enough autonomous protection to give the ground ample time to react to and fully recover from an on-orbit anomaly. LRO will nominally be in contact with the ground for nearly 1 hour out of every 2, and will receive a command load, form the ground, every day. LRO will require a number of routine maneuvers to maintain itself on orbit. These include bi-monthly momentum unloading maneuvers, monthly station-keeping maneuvers, and bi-annual spacecraft yaw maneuvers. Finally, LRO is being designed to survive the long lunar eclipses that it will encounter if operated late into the 2010 timeframe. This paper will address these and many other topics related to the mission design and operations of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-07-C1.7.06.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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