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Lunar Flashlight Mission Updates and Discussion
by
Jcc
on 14 Oct, 2014 01:40
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Lunar Flashlight is an exciting new mission concept that was recently selected by NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) by a team from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, UCLA, and Marshall Space Flight Center. This innovative, low-cost concept will map the lunar south pole for volatiles and demonstrate several technological firsts, including being the first CubeSat to reach the Moon, the first mission to use an 80 m2 solar sail, and the first mission to use a solar sail as a reflector for science observations.
http://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/lunar-flashlight/
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#1
by
turbopumpfeedback2
on 11 Oct, 2015 14:11
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I am looking forward to this mission.
But I am not sure what to think whether it will have success. From my understanding it will reflect the sunlight into the shadows and measure spectrum. That means it will be able to obtain information only about the very thin surface part of the regolith, maybe few particle diameters into the soli. Now this makes me wonder if there is any ice directly at the surface.
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#2
by
Phil Stooke
on 11 Oct, 2015 14:38
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Many small craters are secondaries (made by chunks of ejecta from other impacts) and hit more slowly, not necessarily vaporizing ice but just turning over the regolith ("gardening"), mixing ice to significant depths over a billion years. Also, modelling suggests that temperatures which are still very low but a bit higher than the minimum in polar craters (e.g. shaded surface warmed slightly by sunlight reflected off crater rims) allow water ice to diffuse slowly into the porous regolith (and gardening allows porosity to persist). So there may be methods for collecting and retaining ice at depths of a meter or more. There should also be thin surface frosts consisting of recent ice deposits.
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#3
by
turbopumpfeedback2
on 11 Oct, 2015 14:51
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Many small craters are secondaries (made by chunks of ejecta from other impacts) and hit more slowly, not necessarily vaporizing ice but just turning over the regolith ("gardening"), mixing ice to significant depths over a billion years. Also, modelling suggests that temperatures which are still very low but a bit higher than the minimum in polar craters (e.g. shaded surface warmed slightly by sunlight reflected off crater rims) allow water ice to diffuse slowly into the porous regolith (and gardening allows porosity to persist). So there may be methods for collecting and retaining ice at depths of a meter or more. There should also be thin surface frosts consisting of recent ice deposits.
Thanks, that is quite interesting. (Sorry, I shortened my previous post)
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#4
by
TrevorMonty
on 11 Oct, 2015 14:54
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#5
by
Blackstar
on 17 Oct, 2015 01:09
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Here is the presentation from the FISO discussion.
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#6
by
Blackstar
on 17 Oct, 2015 01:21
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#7
by
Blackstar
on 17 Oct, 2015 01:23
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#8
by
savuporo
on 17 Oct, 2015 02:40
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That is a brilliant mission, wish it could fly sooner. Also interesting to see LEON3 winning ground
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#9
by
Warren Platts
on 18 Oct, 2015 18:36
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brilliant mission, wish it could fly sooner.
Hitching their wagon to SLS...
PS Also didn't
Fornaro propose something like this a few years ago?
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#10
by
turbopumpfeedback2
on 27 Nov, 2015 21:00
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#11
by
JH
on 28 Nov, 2015 16:33
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There was a problem with damping oscillations caused by rotating the sail to point it at targets. I'm glad that they were able to close the design using direct illumination.
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#12
by
FutureSpaceTourist
on 11 Dec, 2022 07:37
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#13
by
FutureSpaceTourist
on 11 Dec, 2022 07:49
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#14
by
FutureSpaceTourist
on 11 Dec, 2022 07:52
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#15
by
FutureSpaceTourist
on 11 Dec, 2022 07:59
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#16
by
FutureSpaceTourist
on 11 Dec, 2022 21:44
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Cross-post:
twitter.com/planet4589/status/1602067552330465282
Falcon 9 stage 2 from Hakuto-R M1 launch cataloged as 54698 in its SECO-1 orbit of 167 x 297 km x 29.0 deg. JPL Horizons gives expected Lunar Flashlight orbit of 290 x 1118971 km x 29.1 deg; Hakuto-R M1 and Falcon 9 2nd stage current orbits assumed to be similar.
https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1602068092363866113
Current altitude of all three objects is already around 149,000 km
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#17
by
FutureSpaceTourist
on 11 Dec, 2022 23:09
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https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1602082045781581827Here is a visualization of the Lunar Flashlight traj from Horizons. It heads out to the Hill Sphere around mid-Jan - a million km offset from L2 - and then falls back to approach the Moon in late March. Hakuto-R probably similar.
Geocentric solar ecliptic XY coords.
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#18
by
Rondaz
on 12 Dec, 2022 10:26
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#19
by
FutureSpaceTourist
on 12 Dec, 2022 15:53
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