In response to the Discovery announcement of opportunity a team consisting of TRW Lewis Research Center, JPL and UCLA with scientific co-investigators from government and University laboratories have proposed to fly the first planetary solar electric propulsion (SEP) mission. Diana is designed to carry an X-ray and gamma ray spectrometer, and imaging spectrometer, a framing camera, a laser altimer an ion spectrometer and a magnetometer. In order to obtain lunar gravity data from the far side of the moon a relay satellite is placed into high polar orbit about the moon to relay the Doppler-shifted telemetry to Earth. Diana will spend two months in a 700 km polar orbit obtaining mineralogical data from a full spectral map of the lunar surface, and then spend a year in a 100 km (or below) polar orbit mapping the lunar elemental composition, its topography, gravity field, ions from its atmosphere and its permanent and induced magnetic fields. After the low altitude mapping phase the ion thrusters propel the spacecraft out of the lunar sphere of influence and onto a heloioscentric trajectory to rendezvous with dormant comet Wilson-Harrington. The ground truth provided by the returned lunar samples to validate the remote sensing instruments for lunar studies will also serve to validate the Wilson-Harrington observations since the same instruments will be used at both bodies.
Collaboration on SEP Missions to the Moon and Small Bodies
1997-01-01
Report
No indication
English
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2003
|NTRS | 1990
|AIAA | 1990
|Automatic Design of Missions to Small Bodies
AIAA | 2018
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