PHLOTE Mission

PHLOTE Mission

Kevin Kempton

Phobos as a captured asteroid, early in Mars’ formation, how did it form without having a rubble body surface?

Identifying if it has water etc in it?

There are grooves on it, is it starting to get pulled apart.

A lot of talk about a precursor mission to Phobos, thoughts to go to Phobos first.

Radiation environments, dust environments, oxygen as a consumable and 85% of propellant reactions. If we can stay there, it would be a nice thing to have.

Public interest, having an eye in the sky view decomposing of Phobos, with a precursor crew.

Small body with low gravity, very close to mars, a perfect playpen for preparing L1 operations. An extended mission could be useful

The Phlote spacecraft is compromised of the main spacecraft, with subsystems, … , and a sensor sytem attached with a tether system.

Mars Observational Monitor (MOM) is the main spacecraft, mass allocation is 40kg

S-band patch antenna, tether reel and deployer, navigation lira, transceivers, solar array actuation, battery array…

Tangible launch vehicle to show a credible design. High inclination launch sight with a small bipropellant thruster to get PHLOTE past the majority of earths radiation belts.

When we do get to mars we will be going into a mapping orbit around phobos, we will need to get L1 and L2 locations identified quickly for lextended ops.

The spacecraft cannot fight periodic motion, but allowing it to go with periodic motion, and the tether system avoids use of propellant to stay in one place while mapping.

Description of drift rates

The tech making this possible are navigation doppler liar 

Op range: 6000 m 

Velocity error .2cm /sec

Range error: 23 cm.

Low gravity means low tension, like a dime on a 6m thread

How to avoid a ball of spaghetti on the tether: pretensionors.

Cold gas thrusters may minimize the impulse inanition to a spring mechanism.

Thermal expansion in the tether will also be a factor as the craft will be going into eclipse regularly

Precursor mission by 2023 for PDR, land 2026.

Data also provided for a similar application on Titan Operation Tether Experiment (TOTE), can be applicable to many others…

QA

What are your rying to do with the tether?

Allows you to sample and do observations. Stability and control. 

But you are going to land anyway?

The tether will help with a low cost mission, including after landing, having the tether.

Does the tether provide any services to the landing op? MOM to POP?

Yeah, we thought about that first, but we are moving away from that, instead above the sensor platform we are going to have such a system that is conductive, but we have an abrasive tether, it will be noncontinuous to the main space craft, allowing the craft to be reeled in and out appropriately...

What about landing in multiple spots?

SDK did not like the rough surface, so the tether won out after such an orbital analysis.

I am glad to see attention given to PHLOBOS, as the Russians, I see it as among the most valuable locations in the solar system. Why have you not mentioned the elephant of the room, that if you can anchor with the tether? You would have a space elevator. The first space elevator dynamic testing as well as a counterweight.

We want to have a low-cost dynamic mission, and the scale cannot be increased.

If we are looking at ISRU from the moon, one thing we have done is boulder grabbing. I am intrigued by the use of the system to bring a boulder back to the processor, it could eliminate the heavy propellants.

I agree because the free end of a tether is a great place to put an American flag.

I know! I can tell the Russians we worked with and they will say, ‘Isn’t that great!”