Lunar Sample Return via the Interplanetary

• Main Authors: Martin W. Lo, Min Kun, J. Chung
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aitken; South Pole; The Landing; South pole
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.506.8383; http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/9817/1/02-1975.pdf

Figure 1. The whole trajectory is shown in the Earth-Moon rotating frame. The Earth launch is in brown, the insertion into LL2 is in blue, the lander orbit to the Moon in red, and the lander return orbit is purple. The detailed plot of halo orbit about LL2 and the landing is expanded on the right side. The purple lander return trajectory in the Earth-Moon rotating frame on the left side is not so apparent; however, in the Sun-Earth rotating frame the same trajectory appears much more sensible as shown in Figure 6 later. The Aitken Basin at the lunar south pole is the largest impact crater known in the Solar System, piercing the Moon’s mantle. A National Research Council panel recently recommended that NASA consider a robotic Lunar Sample Return mission to collect samples from the Aitken Basin and return them to Earth for study [ 11. This paper describes one approach to a Lunar Sample Return mission. This Lunar Sample mission consists of two spacecraft: a communications module and a landedsample return module; the modules are carried to the Moon by a bus. The desired landing site in this case is on the backside of Moon which cannot be seen from Earth; this is why a communications module is needed. Knowledge of the Interplanetary Superhighway tunnels and their dynamics provided good initial guess solutions for the final integrated solutions (see Figure 1). The exploration of the design trade space was facilitated by JPL’s LToo12001 mission design tool. 1.