Proposal to Use Small Spacecraft to Return More Samples From the Moon
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
NASA engineers have devised a plan to adapt technologies in order to increase the amount of samples the space agency can return from the moon and the lunar Gateway during its Artemis program.
Alan Cassell, who leads the Mission Design Center at the NASA Ames Research Center, Calif., presented a paper at the Small Satellite 2022 conference in Logan, Utah. The plan is designed to augment the 100 kg of samples that the Orion crewed spacecraft will return to Earth.
The plan involves adapting the capsule technology that NASA is using in the OSIRIS-REx mission to return samples of the asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft reached the asteroid in 2018, and it is due to fly by the Earth and release a capsule with soil samples that will land at the Utah Test and Training Range on Sept. 24, 2023
The capsule would be placed atop a SpaceX logistics module that will bring equipment and supplies to the human-tended lunar Gateway station, Cassell said. Gateway’s robotic arm would be used to transfer samples into the capsule.
When the logistics module depart the space station, the capsule would be placed on an Earth return trajectory to reenter Earth’s atmosphere and land under parachutes in Utah.
Cassell said a variety of samples could be returned using the system, including lunar regolith, materials exposed to the deep-space environment, stabilized samples from crew members to understand the impact on astronaut health, and microbiology experiments.
7 responses to “Proposal to Use Small Spacecraft to Return More Samples From the Moon”
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What is needed is large semi-expendable robot landers that can extract and process lunar ice into propellants and water and ferry that water up to “fat” wet workshops in frozen lunar orbit. When the cosmic ray water shield of a thousand tons plus is full…then send astronauts.
This Fat Workshop pipeline will provide crew compartments for Space Stations in various orbits and Lunar Cyclers and eventually true Spaceships capable of human mission using nuclear propulsion Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (HSF-BELO).
This is excellent. Lunar prospecting and geology is going to be critical to determine just how much water is on the moon and how accessible it is. Knowing that will be necessary to inform what kind of tech is needed for its harvest and transport.
Delta II kiddy stuff
Not everything needs a massive rocket, at least not one at high cost. Small vehicles will have their niche too.
That shake out will be ugly–at least astrobotic is helping Maasten folks out–which is nice. There are not many space advocates—-we need to stick together.
The small launch market is going to get bloody
https://thespacereview.com/…
https://uploads.disquscdn.c… “Gateway logistics module”? Isn’t that just NASA speak, for the Dragon XL?
In which case, why mess with a new external payload for mounting on Dragon XL? If NASA needs returned samples from the Moon so much that Orion is incapable of the job, then why not just send an occasional Dragon 2 cargo ship to Gateway instead of the Dragon XL?
That would mean sacrificing perhaps 2 tons of payload delivery to Gateway, compared to the Dragon XL 5 tons of payload, but the Dragon 2 could return perhaps a ton of samples to Earth from Gateway. Using Dragon 2 for payload returns, sounds like a cheaper simpler solution than the conceptual “small sample return system” which would require so much external handling of samples. Dragon 2 would also permit rapid return of samples from Gateway.
The trade is between the presumed 250 kg mass of the “small sample return system” added to the mass of the Dragon XL, vs sending a Dragon 2 to Gateway. I doubt that adding the nav/com systems to the Dragon 2 that Dragon XL is going to use would be much of a barrier. Certainly less difficult and costly than what the “small sample return system” would cost. Particularly when you consider the sample transfer complications of the “small sample return system”.
$L$ delenda est