Lander and Cislunar Gateway Architecture Concepts for Lunar Exploration

Duggan, Matthew; Simon, Xavier D.; Moseman, Travis

doi:10.1109/aero.2019.8741766

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Several methods have been developed to estimate the reusability of systems or to guide development with reusability in mind [16,17,8,18]. Previous work has determined the level of reusability which can be incorporated into a space system with current technologies and suggested areas to focus reusable technology development [1].…”

Section: Methods For Reusability Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As such, these systems were used once and then discarded. As humans venture further into deep space towards Mars and Near-Earth objects, it will become increasing difficult to use expendable systems that cannot be repaired or provide routine resupply from Earth [8]. Reusable systems will play several roles in exploration programs, from enabling sustainable missions to the lunar surface to serving as the building blocks for infrastructure in deep space [9].…”

Section: Exploration In the Age Of Reusabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies focused on NASA's current lunar mission design have determined Gateway provides several advantages over a traditional Lunar Orbit Rendezvous mission mode including as a logistics node for lunar and Mars missions and a platform to demonstrate telerobotic operation [22]. Previous work has also reasoned that utilizing a cislunar space station with a reusable landing system will give the lowest life cycle cost for a long-term exploration program while enabling commercialization of cislunar space [8]. Other work has shown the value of designing Lunar exploration systems to be extensible to Mars architectures.…”

Section: Previous Lunar Lander Design Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reusability Analysis for Lunar Landers

Bart¹,

Hoffman²

2021

2021 IEEE Aerospace Conference (50100)

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As the world prepares to return to the lunar surface with the Artemis program, NASA recommended developing a reusable lunar lander to enable a sustainable exploration program. It is logical to think that reusing a lunar lander instead of building a new one for each mission is more cost-effective, but this statement only holds for some mission architectures. This work explores the principal effects of adding reusability and quantifying its impact on manned lunar lander designs. A multidisciplinary model is presented that explores the lunar lander design space to understand how reusability impacts the chosen objectives of IMLEO, life-cycle cost, and safety. The choice of reusability and the use of a cislunar space station are found to have the greatest impact on the chosen objectives. The effect of changing the refurbishment cost per mission is also analyzed. An optimization framework is then applied to the resulting model to determine the optimal lunar lander design for a given mission. For the Artemis program, an expendable design was found to be more cost-effective than implementing reusability as only five lunar surface missions are currently planned. However, if additional missions are added a hybrid implementation of reusability, which entails reusing the transfer and ascent elements multiple times but changing out line-replacement units after each mission, becomes most cost-effective. Furthermore, a fully reusable design, where the transfer and ascent elements only require consumables to be replenished between missions, was found to be less cost-effective than a hybrid design for the range of values studied. The results of this work are intended to guide the development of the next generation of lunar landers and future space systems as the model and optimization framework can be adapted to explore the benefit of reusability for a wide range of space systems.

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Section: Methods For Reusability Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Exploration In the Age Of Reusabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Previous Lunar Lander Design Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reusability Analysis for Lunar Landers

Bart¹,

Hoffman²

2021

2021 IEEE Aerospace Conference (50100)

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“…Historically, all past lunar landers (i.e., Luna, Ranger, Surveyor, Apollo 11,12,14,15,16,and 17 The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Szidónia Lefkovits . and solar-altitude angles.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, NASA is preparing to send the first female astronaut to the lunar south pole in 2024 via the Artemis program [11] to help establish of sustainable human presence on the moon. The program incorporates a construction plan for the first lunar space station, the Gateway [12], which will orbit the moon. Furthermore, regions of permanent shadow created by rough terrain and low solar altitude around the poles, where cold traps with water ice are present, have been located and are considered to be suitable places for a lunar base with human habitation [13]- [16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deep Neural Network-Based Landmark Selection Method for Optical Navigation on Lunar Highlands

et al. 2020

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Spacecraft that rely on self-localization based on optical terrain images require suitable landmark information along their flight paths. When navigating within the vicinity of the moon, a lunar crater is an intuitive choice. However, in highland areas or regions having low solar altitudes, craters are less reliable because of heavy shadowing, which results in infrequent and unpredictable crater detections. This paper, therefore, presents a method for suggesting navigation landmarks that are usable, even with unfavorable illumination and rough terrain, and it provides a procedure for applying this method to a lunar flight plan. To determine a good landmark, a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based object detector is trained to distinguish likely landmark candidates under varying lighting geometries and to predict landmark detection probabilities along flight paths attributable to various dates. Dates having more favorable detection probabilities can be determined in advance, providing a useful tool for mission planning. Numerical experiments show that the proposed landmark detector generates usable navigation information at sun elevations of less than 1.8 • in highland areas.

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