Preliminary study of the multi—physics design for the support structure of LEM—X space mission

Abstract

In this modern space exploration era, the lunar site offers new opportunities such as the deployment of an X—ray observatory capable of observing half of the sky simultaneously, but also may allowing access to the entire solid angle by exploiting the rotation of the moon around its own axis.The Lunar Electromagnetic Monitor in X—rays (LEM—X) is an All Sky Monitor for the X—ray band (2–50 keV) based on the concept of coded aperture camera. The basic element is the camera of the Wide Field Monitor and the concept is to realize a ”dome” composed of N identical modules that observe different directions, thus covering an overall simultaneous field of view of 2π in the sky. In this paper, we describe the preliminary study of a support structure for that camera, the design solutions adopted for the most important thermo—mechanical drivers, which have been elaborated and used for the demonstration of compliance to the system requirements with the environment. In particular, we reported some different thermal and mechanical scenario of this preliminary structure and the optimization of critical components with innovative and accurate fem analysis.