The Lunar IceCube (LIC) mission, a Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NSTEP) program selection, was launched as a rideshare onboard Artemis-I on November 16th 2022, and deployed into a high energy lunar flyby trajectory. The final destination of the mission was a polar elliptical lunar orbit from which it could conduct spectroscopy observations of the lunar surface; however, a near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) was planned to be used as a staging orbit that divided the lunar transfer and low-thrust spiral phases of the mission. This paper presents the process used to design the LIC transfer trajectory from the high-energy deployment state to a 9:2 synodic resonance NRHO. Additional analyses performed, to assess the critical deployment to lunar flyby phase of the trajectory and to generate recovery trajectories following a loss of contact with the spacecraft, are described as well. Lessons learned from working on the LIC mission are presented to inform the design of similar future CubeSat missions.


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    Title :

    Trajectory Design and Early Mission Operations for the Lunar IceCube Mission


    Contributors:
    R. E. Pritchett (author) / D. C. Folta (author) / S. Hur-Diaz (author) / K. Hughes (author)

    Publication date :

    2023


    Size :

    18 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




    Trajectory Design and Early Mission Operations for the Lunar IceCube Mission

    Robert Pritchett / Dave Folta / Sun Hur-Diaz et al. | NTRS


    Trajectory Design and Early Mission Operations for the Lunar IceCube Mission

    Robert E Pritchett / David C Folta / Sun Hur-Diaz et al. | NTRS | 2023


    Trajectory Design and Early Mission Operations for the Lunar IceCube Mission

    R. Pritchett / D. Folta / S. Hur-Diaz et al. | NTIS | 2023