The Use of Standards on the LADEE Mission
- Author
- Gundy-Burlet, Karen
- Published
- May 2015.
- Physical Description
- 1 electronic document
Online Version
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Free-to-read Unrestricted online access - Summary
- The Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) was a small explorer class mission that launched Sept 7, 2013 and successfully de-orbited and impacted the moon's surface on April 17, 2014. The spacecraft was the first to launch from a Minotaur 5 and was the first deep space mission to launch from the Wallops flight facility. Figure 1 shows the famous image of a frog unlucky enough to be launched from the facility at the same time as LADEE. The science mission for the spacecraft was to determine the density, composition and variability of the lunar exosphere. In addition, it performed a first-of-a-kind demonstration of laser-based communications from deep space that exhibited a record downlink rate of 622 megabits per second from the moon. In order to perform the lunar dust surveys, the spacecraft was placed in a retrograde equatorial orbit with periapsis between 20 and 60 kilometers. The mission was granted an extension in which final science surveys were performed at altitudes as low as 2 kilometers over the moon's surface. The cadence for spacecraft operations was demanding: the moon's highly inhomogeneous gravity field distorted the orbit, the regular maneuvers were subject to strict payload-induced pointing requirements, and there were periodic attitude changes to keep the spacecraft thermally safe. This led to a need for high reliability in the operation of the spacecraft while obeying strict budget and schedule guidelines.
- Other Subject(s)
- Collection
- NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) Collection.
- Note
- Document ID: 20150022370.
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