Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission and Spacecraft Design

Tooley, Craig; Houghton, M. B.; Saylor, Richard; Peddie, C.; Everett, D.; Baker, Charles Laurence; Safdie, Kristina N.

doi:10.1007/s11214-009-9624-4

Cited by 75 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…In general, the cold nightside lunar atmosphere is dominated by non-condensible species, including He, detected by Apollo-era instrumentation, and Ne and H2, as observed by LADEE and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO, Tooley et al 2010). LADEE also confirmed the presence of argon at the equator and the Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP, Gladstone et al 2010) placed limits on Ar at the poles (Hodges and Mahaffy 2016;Grava et al 2015;).…”

Section: The Moonmentioning

confidence: 84%

Imaging Plasma Density Structures in the Soft X-Rays Generated by Solar Wind Charge Exchange with Neutrals

et al. 2018

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Both heliophysics and planetary physics seek to understand the complex nature of the solar wind's interaction with solar system obstacles like Earth's magnetosphere, the ionospheres of Venus and Mars, and comets. Studies with this objective are frequently conducted with the help of single or multipoint in situ electromagnetic field and particle observations, guided by the predictions of both local and global numerical simulations, and placed in con- text by observations from far and extreme ultraviolet (FUV, EUV), hard X-ray, and energetic neutral atom imagers (ENA). Each proposed interaction mechanism (e.g., steady or transient magnetic reconnection, local or global magnetic reconnection, ion pick-up, or the KelvinHelmholtz instability) generates diagnostic plasma density structures. The significance of each mechanism to the overall interaction (as measured in terms of atmospheric/ionospheric loss at comets, Venus, and Mars or global magnetospheric/ionospheric convection at Earth) remains to be determined but can be evaluated on the basis of how often the density signatures that it generates are observed as a function of solar wind conditions. This paper reviews efforts to image the diagnostic plasma density structures in the soft (low energy, 0.1-2.0 keV) X-rays produced when high charge state solar wind ions exchange electrons with the exospheric neutrals surrounding solar system obstacles. The introduction notes that theory, local, and global simulations predict the characteristics of plasma boundaries such the bow shock and magnetopause (including location, density gradient, and motion) and regions such as the magnetosheath (including density and width) as a function of location, solar wind conditions, and the particular mechanism operating. In situ measurements confirm the existence of time-and spatial-dependent plasma density structures like the bow shock, magnetosheath, and magnetopause/ionopause at Venus, Mars, comets, and the Earth. However, in situ measurements rarely suffice to determine the global extent of these density structures or their global variation as a function of solar wind conditions, except in the form of empirical studies based on observations from many different times and solar wind conditions. Remote sensing observations provide global information about auroral ovals (FUV and hard X-ray), the terrestrial plasmasphere (EUV), and the terrestrial ring current (ENA). ENA instruments with low energy thresholds (∼ 1 keV) have recently been used to obtain important information concerning the magnetosheaths of Venus, Mars, and the Earth. Recent technological developments make these magnetosheaths valuable potential targets for high-cadence wide-field-of-view soft X-ray imagers.Section 2 describes proposed dayside interaction mechanisms, including reconnection, the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, and other processes in greater detail with an emphasis on the plasma density structures that they generate. It focuses upon the questions that remain as yet unanswered, such as the significanc...

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Section: The Moonmentioning

confidence: 84%

Imaging Plasma Density Structures in the Soft X-Rays Generated by Solar Wind Charge Exchange with Neutrals

et al. 2018

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“…On 15 September 2009, LRO transitioned into a 50 km quasi-circular polar orbit (50 ± 15 km) for the nominal and first portion of the science mission. Each month a station-keeping maneuver kept the orbit of the spacecraft from degrading (Tooley et al 2010). On two occasions during the science mission phase (16 September 2010 to 15 September 2012) the usual station keeping maneuver was modified with a special pair of maneuvers to lower the periapsis of the orbit to ∼21 km above the surface.…”

Section: On-orbit Image Acquisitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pre-flight and On-orbit Geometric Calibration of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera

et al. 2014

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The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) consists of two imaging systems that provide multispectral and high resolution imaging of the lunar surface. The Wide Angle Camera (WAC) is a seven color push-frame imager with a 90 • field of view in monochrome mode and 60 • field of view in color mode. From the nominal 50 km polar orbit, the WAC acquires images with a nadir ground sampling distance of 75 m for each of the five visible bands and 384 m for the two ultraviolet bands. The Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) consists of two identical cameras capable of acquiring images with a ground sampling distance of 0.5 m from an altitude of 50 km. The LROC team geometrically calibrated each camera before launch at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, California and the resulting measurements enabled the generation of a detailed camera model for all three cameras. The cameras were mounted and subsequently launched on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) on 18 June 2009. Using a subset of the over 793000 NAC and 207000 WAC images of illuminated terrain collected between 30 June 2009 and 15 December 2013, we improved the interior and exterior orientation parameters for each camera, including the addition of a wavelength dependent radial distortion model for the multispectral WAC. Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (These geometric refinements, along with refined ephemeris, enable seamless projections of NAC image pairs with a geodetic accuracy better than 20 meters and sub-pixel precision and accuracy when orthorectifying WAC images.

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“…For the purposes of our system, these biases are not considered individually, and are lumped into a single time varying drift-rate vector. 1 The Sun is distinguished from other stars due to the significant difference in distance (and therefore difference in observation models).…”

Section: Attitude Estimationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A long-duration propulsive lunar landing testbed

Krishna

Peterson

Jones

et al. 2011

2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation

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Abstract-Affordable test articles for descent and landing are crucial for developing commercial lunar landing capability. To ensure successful lunar landing, flight software must be tested over mission-length durations on hardware exhibiting dynamics analogous to those of true flight articles. Energetic and structural constraints typically preclude affordable longduration lander tests.This paper details a first-in-kind propulsive lunar lander testbed designed for long-duration testing. The hardware and software on this platform exhibit dynamics that closely approximate those of real lunar landers and are exhibited to operate stably and indefinitely. The platform requires minimal infrastructure and is low cost to operate.Platform configuration is outlined and state estimation for indefinite duration testing is detailed.

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Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission and Spacecraft Design

Cited by 75 publications

References 4 publications

Imaging Plasma Density Structures in the Soft X-Rays Generated by Solar Wind Charge Exchange with Neutrals

Imaging Plasma Density Structures in the Soft X-Rays Generated by Solar Wind Charge Exchange with Neutrals

Pre-flight and On-orbit Geometric Calibration of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera

A long-duration propulsive lunar landing testbed

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