Design of a Robotic Lunar Lander for Lunar South Pole Exploration

Abstract

In 2005 Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation performed conceptual and systems level design work for a lunar polar robotic Lander, to meet the requirements of the Robotic Lunar Exploration Program (RLEP) precursor robotic missions to the Moon. The study presented in this paper developed Lander concepts using Ball heritage bus architectures. This work developed designs to meet the NASA M-1 mission requirements as defined in the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center paper, ‘The Robotic Lunar Exploration Program (RLEP) – An Introduction to the Goals, Approach, and Architecture’. As the Vision for Exploration matured, the RLEP program was renamed the Lunar Precursor and Robotic Program (LPRP). The lunar South Pole mission scenarios include detection of water, trace element prospecting, In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) demonstrations, technology demonstrations, site surveys, and other missions as required by the community. The Lander was designed to be a ‘workhorse’, capable of delivering various payloads to the lunar surface with little or no modification to the basic Lander. The design philosophy was based on a MIL-STD-1540 Class D mission with minimum redundancy. Aside from spacecraft specific designs, all hardware was selected based on flight heritage components used by Ball Aerospace on its Ball Commercial Platform (BCP) series of spacecraft. For areas outside of Ball’s expertise, teams were formed with both Aerojet and Alliant Techsystems Incorporated (ATK) Elkton for the design and analysis of the propulsion subsystems. This work included design and analysis of the Solid Rocket Motor (SRM) propulsion subsystem and the high thrust terminal descent motors.