Night Survival for Long Term Moon Activities

Paper number

IAC-08.A3.2.B6

Author

Mr. Kohtaro Matsumoto, JAXA/JSPEC, Japan

Coauthor

Mr. Takeshi Hoshino, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan

Coauthor

Mr. Shoichi Yoshihara, Japan

Year

2008

Abstract

Night survivability on the moon is one of the most important and difficult issues for full scale lunar exploration, because the moon surface temperature varies violently, such as 400K at noon and 100K at night. In addition, night lasts more than two weeks in almost all moon regions except polar zone. In order to achieve long-term activities on the moon surface, effective measures must be taken to survive the seriously cold temperatures during the long night. In this paper, the serious results of our preliminary lunar night environment tests, and possible strategies and required systems for long term activities on the Moon will be described.

In 1960’, some precursors of lunar explorer, such as Surveyor and Lunokhod series showed reasonable survivability on the moon with premature parts and subsystems for space usage. 40 years after then, since we have much better designed and tested space parts, space subsystems, and thermal isolation technologies, could we expect more tough subsystems for long term lunar exploration? 

To examine the toughness of modern parts and subsystems, we have done the thermal environment tests against various parts and subsystems for these years. The tested parts are flight models on LEO, commercial parts and subsystems, and space qualified parts for real satellite on GEO. The summary of results is not so promising, for long-term lunar activities.  

To survive the lunar night, various options are expected as possible solution. The most provable option is the usage of RHU/RTG. However, there are difficult problem for us against RHU/RTG survival. The most promising way is the special characteristics utilization of lunar pole zone. There might be Eternal Light Region, or relatively short night time region lunar south and north pole. However, the dependency for polar region will restrict the full scale lunar exploration and utilization. One possible option is the usage of lunar regolith as the thermal protection resource. For this option, our Lunar-A was the demonstrator, but we stopped Lunar-A because of other technical difficulty. Another possible options is the usage of rechargeable battery, such as chemical, regenerative fuel cell system. By the current technological level, the regenerative fuel cell system has more promising than the chemical rechargeable battery system. The final option is the development of very tough parts and subsystem for the lunar night survival. 

In the paper, we will show the results of our lunar environment test, discuss verification process for SELENE-2, and discuss lunar night survival system trade-off from various view points for the SELENE-2 concept.

Abstract document

IAC-08.A3.2.B6.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-08.A3.2.B6.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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