The Lunar Flashlight CubeSat Instrument: A Compact SWIR Laser Reflectometer to Quantify and Map Water Ice on the Surface of the Moon

The Lunar Flashlight (LF) mission will send a CubeSat to lunar orbit via NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) test flight. The LF spacecraft will carry a novel instrument to quantify and map water ice harbored in the permanently shadowed craters of the lunar South Pole. The LF instrument, an active mult...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wehmeier, Udo, Vinckier, Quentin, Sellar, R. Glenn, Paine, Christopher G., Hayne, Paul O., Bagheri, Mahmood, Rais-Zadeh, Mina, Forouhar, Siamak, Loveland, Jessica, Shelton, Jacob
Format: Report
Language:English
Published: Pasadena, CA: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2018 2020
Subjects:
CubeSat
Lunar Flashlight
reflectometer
laser
radiometry
remote sensing
South Pole
South pole
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/2014/48615
Description
Summary:The Lunar Flashlight (LF) mission will send a CubeSat to lunar orbit via NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) test flight. The LF spacecraft will carry a novel instrument to quantify and map water ice harbored in the permanently shadowed craters of the lunar South Pole. The LF instrument, an active multi-band reflectometer which employs four high power diode lasers in the 1-2 μm infrared band, will measure the reflectance of the lunar surface near water ice absorption peaks. We present the detailed instrument design and system engineering required to deploy this instrument within very demanding CubeSat resource allocations. NASA/JPL

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