LADEE: A Flight of Firsts (Part 1)

In the world of spaceflight, manned and unmanned alike, "firsts" are avoided whenever possible. "Firsts" are typically expensive, technically challenging, and inherently high-risk. NASA's upcoming LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer) mission will take part in several significant "firsts", which I'll be explaining over the next few days. We'll begin with the spacecraft itself.




The first flight of the Modular Common Spacecraft Bus
Every planetary science spacecraft before LADEE was a custom construction. Planners started with mission objectives and a budget, determined the scientific instruments needed to accomplish their objectives, and then designed the best structure within their budget that could accommodate those instruments. The Modular Common Spacecraft Bus is what it says it is. The MCSB is a system of component segments that can be mass produced to reduce cost and complexity. The spacecraft designers select the necessary modules for their specific mission and the spacecraft is then assembled in less time and with less cost than a uniquely engineered spacecraft. At least that's the concept. LADEE will be the first to put the concept into action.
   Personally, I think it's a brilliant plan because an outstanding amount of a mission's funding goes into the hardware that will take the instruments to their destination(s). If the MCSB lives up to its full potential, planetary science missions have a chance of being flown more frequently and with a greater scientific return per dollar. I'm not usually one to focus on the funding of missions but the general public hasn't typically seen planetary science as being as exciting as manned spaceflight and there tends to be less funding sent in that direction. Thankfully, in the past year the Curiosity rover has brought more focus on science and MCSB might be the key to getting the costs low enough to maintain that focus and support.

Tomorrow's Topic: The first launch of Orbital Sciences' Minotaur V rocket

BANG! ZOOM! Back to the Moon!

         On September 6th, NASA will be launching a new scientific probe to the moon. It’s called LADEE, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer. The mission’s scientific aim is to explore the moon’s atmosphere, more accurately called an exosphere. An exosphere is a collection of gasses bound to an object by its gravitational field but those gasses are so thinly distributed that the atoms and molecules don’t even interact with each other. Because of this, we’ve all been taught that the moon has no atmosphere.

            LADEE, a car-sized robotic vehicle, will enter an orbit around the moon at only 20-60 km (12-37mi) in order to pass through the thin lunar exosphere that’s so close to the surface. For 100 days it will use its onboard instrumentation to analyze which gasses are bound to the moon and in what proportion they exist. The other phenomenon that will be investigated is the presence of lunar dust in the exosphere. One lander, sent before our astronauts arrived, Surveyor 7 (1968), photographed strange glowing on the horizon as the sun began to rise and when they arrived our Apollo astronauts also witnessed the glow during their stays on the moon (1969-1972). The prevailing theory is that this is the result of significant amounts of lunar dust above the surface. LADEE will determine if there is indeed any dust present. The interesting part about that experiment is that either way we’ll still have a mystery. If yes, how did it get up there? If no, what caused the glow?

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more on LADEE and everything else spaceflight related!