Smallsat version of the European Moon Orbiting Observatory (MORO)

Abstract

As the third medium-class mission in the ESA's Horison 2000 science programme, a Moon Orbiting Observatory (MORO) was proposed for global mapping of lunar topography, mineralogy, geochemistry and gravity. The growing need to reduce the cost of the space missions led the study team to look for several approaches to limit the costs. It was decided therefore to study in parallel to the baseline a smallsat version of MORO which would just address the most important scientific issues in complement to Clementine, Lunar Prospector and Lunar A, notably gravimetry and high accuracy stereo imaging, topography, mineralogy and some elemental composition detection capability. This resulted in halving the payload mass (4̃2 kg) and reducing substantially the spacecraft dry mass (≤300 kg). Such a small satellite can be placed into a lunar transfer orbit directly by a number of emerging new small-medium class launchers. The paper presents the mission and spacecraft design and describes the areas where the smallsat approach has allowed the largest cost reductions.