Red Whittaker - Skylight: Lunar Pit Exploration
Unique windows to unknowns to realities below the moon’s surface
Lunar caves could be shelters to the harsh radiation and other realities of the surface
Pits suggest acces to caves
The pit walls reveal the only observable pristine geology on the moon
Mission scenario surface. Robots will make the next great explorations
The operations are necessarily autonomous
No carrying direct to earth radio
This new class of skylight mission will use rovers
Pit rover to the rim of the pit, capture images and generate images
A smaller rover cannot carry communication equipment and must be preprogrammed
The rovers must be distinct from those that came before
They must be compatible with landers, negotiate pit sheet aprons… cameras must extend over into the pit
Pit ranger has a rigidly suspended four wheel drive skid steer
Aggressive slope extent, reverse pivoting to ascend
The model reverses these features for space relevance
Autonomy enables fast exploration
Microrovers cannot move quickly in response to human control. Autonomy allows the rapid movement. This is necessary because there are only 12 days, not 12 years to complete the mission
Both the imagery and plot morphology …
The flyover pit rover is also the model that the rover depends upon
The flyover image like satellite imagery cannot view into total darkness
The autonomy directs the rover to occupy strategic outlooks
Overlooks are ID’d while descending the steep apron
High quality navigation in motion at double the speed required to achieve exploration of any of the largest pits, this increases on speed and accuracy of previous rovers
Three images are captured at short, medium and long exposures
This eliminates burnout, retains lighting, and …
The rover returns to the pit to continue the exploration, this allows series uplink of models to earth
The longer the rover is operational, the higher the fidelity of the model
Skylight preprocesses before transferring to landing for modelling, the small size is negligible compared to the raw imagery that could not possibly be downloaded to earth
Cavern could not possibly be seen from satellites
LiDAR was utilized to create a high precision model to compare the rover to actual geometry of the pit with 2,850 sq m of area
The field experiments generated accurate 3d square models
Significantly advanced towards viability
Near term low cost missions to increase the exploration of lunar caverns
Q: upon fall, still useful?
A: very unlikely, though many of the small pits that are not sheer drops, almost seem to have ramps that is almost a matter of gradation
Q: potential ice that might be present on the moon?
A: yes, great activity in that area, given the ambition for pristine ice though a lighting phenomena as you come closer and closer to the pole, the grazing light makes it harder and harder to discover, just the true polar pits where ice would be accumulated are not yet known to exist
Q: any international partners for this project?
A: Yes, the Japanese with their Selene missions were the first to discover the pits, Hariyamo and Issa were among would like to see the ice on the poles, which everybody wants
Q: everything predicted?
A: yes, the lander is a flyover instrument which acquires those flyover imagery from which a first model is made. It is certainly possible that the light correcting could be added to the flyover imagery
Q: is there any use for the bot before NIAC?
A: every great mission has a …. Spoke earlier on a ramp in addition to the cave discoveries would discern a most likely route, lastly there are many scenarios for lobbing something into a crater and sensing something into a parabolic flight, and passing from a leap is also a scenario
Q: sending down a 6’3” cable, what turned you away from that approach?
A: this always comes up, whether to use a tether, and of course those are viable approaches and the moon diver proposed that approach, part of that is budget, further out, and more involved complexity with increased sulfur line that would come in its time, not in some far out someday, but instead for frequent lunar destination missions…. Also allows a cluster of pits etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment