Although the team devised a creative method for using just one thruster to maneuver the spacecraft, Lunar Flashlight needed more consistent thrust to reach its planned orbit. The miniaturized propulsion system included an additively manufactured fuel feed system that likely developed the debris – such as metal powder or shavings – and obstructed fuel flow to the thrusters, limiting their performance. The team suspects that debris obstructed the fuel lines, causing the diminished and inconsistent thrust. “But like all the other systems, we collected a lot of in-flight performance data on the instrument that will be incredibly valuable to future iterations of this technique.”ĭespite the mission’s technological wins, Lunar Flashlight’s miniaturized propulsion system struggled to provide sufficient thrust to put the CubeSat on course for the planned near-rectilinear halo orbit that would have given the spacecraft weekly flybys of the Moon’s South Pole. “It’s disappointing for the science team, and for the whole Lunar Flashlight team, that we won’t be able to use our laser reflectometer to make measurements at the Moon,” said Barbara Cohen, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The mission’s miniaturized four-laser reflectometer, a science instrument that had never flown before, either, also tested successfully, giving the mission’s science team confidence that the laser would have been able to detect ice if it were present at the lunar surface. Those systems, and the lessons Lunar Flashlight taught us, will be used for future missions.” “Lunar Flashlight was highly successful from the standpoint of being a testbed for new systems that had never flown in space before. “Technology demonstrations are, by their nature, higher risk and high reward, and they’re essential for NASA to test and learn,” said Christopher Baker, program executive for Small Spacecraft Technology in the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Featuring a new precision navigation capability, the radio can be used by future small spacecraft to rendezvous and land on solar system bodies. Although the propulsion system was unable to produce the desired thrust – likely because of debris buildup in the thruster fuel lines – newly developed propulsion system components exceeded performance expectations.Īlso surpassing expectations were Lunar Flashlight’s never-before-flown Sphinx flight computer – a low-power computer developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to withstand the radiation of deep space – and the spacecraft’s upgraded Iris radio. Used for the first time beyond Earth’s orbit, Lunar Flashlight’s propulsion system and green fuel were such demonstrations. NASA relies on technology demonstrations to fill specific knowledge gaps and to test new technologies. Because the CubeSat cannot complete maneuvers to stay in the Earth-Moon system, NASA has called an end to the mission. Since then, the briefcase-size satellite’s miniaturized propulsion system – the first of its kind ever flown – proved unable to generate enough thrust to get into lunar orbit, despite months of effort by the operations team. 11, 2022, to demonstrate several new technologies, with an ultimate goal to seek out surface ice in the permanently shadowed craters of the Moon’s South Pole.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |