MPE, THE GERMAN LUNAR MOBILE PAYLOAD ELEMENT

摘要

Europe is presently preparing for a robotic mission tothe Earth's Moon. The mission under study calledLunar Lander is aiming for a Moon landing in the year2018. The Lunar Lander is capable of a precise landingnear the lunar south-pole and shall have a payload ofapprox. 40 kg [1, 2].Late 2010, the German Space Agency, DLR, invitedthe German industry to submit a proposal for a studyabout a Mobile Payload Element (MPE) which, as abaseline, could be a German national contribution tothe Lunar Lander ESA Mission. MPE is designed to bea small, autonomous, innovative vehicle of roughly10-12 kg for scouting the environment in the vicinity ofthe lunar landing site. The novel capability of the MPE- thus far not matched by any other planetary rover buteventually required for e.g. future robotic Mars samplereturn missions - will be to acquire samples of lunarsoil some distance away from the lander, and to bringthem back to the spacecraft for analysis by on-boardinstruments. This will enable access to soils that areless contaminated by lander descent propulsion systemplumes to increase the chances of detection of anyindigenous lunar volatiles contained within thesamples.Kayser-Threde, Germany, as the Phase 0/A industrialprime, has assembled relevant German industrial andinstitutional competences in space robotics for thisstudy. The core study team led by Kayser-Thredeconsists of the companies von Hoerner & Sulger inSchwetzingen and Astrium in Bremen, and twoinstitutes, the DLR Institute for Robotics &Mechatronics in the Greater Munich area and theGerman Institute for Artificial Intelligence, DFKI, inBremen and is supported by the DLR Institute forPlanetary Research, Berlin.The Phase 0/A study began in April 2011. In the firstphase 0, a concept survey and trade-offs based on areference scenario, which has been developed as part ofthe study. This resulted in a first baseline rover conceptcharacterized by a four-wheel active chassis, a powersupply with fixed solar generator, a secondary batteryand a primary battery as backup, a thermal controlsystem based on active heating and passive insulation,an optimized sensor and autonomy package as well asfull redundant avionics. The system mass of this phase0 concept was estimated with ~17kg. In a next step theconcept was revised by reducing redundancies anddiscarding doubled components. For the Phase A worka MPE concept with a total mass of 12.7kg wasproposed, owing the same functionality as theprecursor concept. This revised baseline assumeslimited redundancy, operation of the rover during thefirst mission phase without darkness and a payloadconsisting of a camera payload, a close-up imager anda "mole" as payload sampling device. With amoderately increased mass budget, more reliability andan improved payload can be realized.