SURVIVAL AND OPERATIONS OF A MICRO-LANDER DURING THE NIGHT IN THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

摘要

The Moon is an extremely interesting planet to explore: the more and more affordable space technologies, make it a target reachable with small and cheap missions affordable by Universities as well. The following paper illustrates part of a project developed from a group of students, supervised by a professor and aims to demonstrate the feasibility of a mission to the surface of the dark side of the Moon. The objective of this research is the realization of a net of three micro-landers (about 20 kg each) which have to operate during the 14-days-long lunar night and that are capable to survive this severe environment using a thermal control system as much passive as possible and installing a conventional power supply system of solar cells and batteries. Additional requirements are that the transmission of the telemetry has to be provided each 12 hours during the eclipse periods and the scientific payload is required to operate for an effective total duration of 6 months. Considering these demands, the power, thermal and telecommunication subsystems have been developed.