session 8

Title

Hitchhiking to the Moon

Description

Based on the significant number of robotic lunar missions of the last decade, a dramatically increased interest in exploration of the Moon for the purpose of developing a permanent human and robotic presence, both for science and space exploration objectives can be expected for the next decades. This renewed interest is broad and international, involving space agencies from the USA, Europe, China, India, Japan, Russia, Germany, UK, and others. Efforts like NASA Lunar Science Institute's (NLSI) rapidly growing global network of affiliates - academic and research institutions who each act as nodes within an existing network of own partners - create demands for additional payload and flight opportunities, particularly from countries who just started their involvement in lunar exploration and science. 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, even as part of commercial enterprises like Google Lunar X-PRIZE missions. Examples from recent years are ESA's SMART-1 mission launched as a co-passenger opportunity from GTO, ISRO’s Chandrayaan spacecraft offering its platform as an opportunity to fly international instruments to the Moon or NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft providing an opportunity for a secondary payload to the Moon, in the form of the LCROSS lunar impactor mission. 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 but are not limited to: 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 new mission concepts, technology readiness and ride-sharing requirements.

Date

2011-10-07

Time

09:00

Room

TS-10

IPC members

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

• Chairman: Prof. Rene Laufer, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden;

• Rapporteur: Dr. Adam Baker, Rocket Engineering Ltd., United Kingdom;