Development of a Lunar Lander Simulator: Commemorating Apollo and Looking to the Future

摘要

July 20, 2019 at 3:17 PM Eastern Standard Time (EST) marked the 50th anniversary of the successful landing of the Apollo 11 lunar module on the moon's surface. This landing achieved a significant milestone in President Kennedy's challenge to the United States — a milestone enabled by engineers and the significant engineering and technology advancements of the time. Draper, formerly the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, was the first prime contract issued as part of NASA's Apollo Program - providing the Guidance and Navigation system for the spacecraft. As part of Draper's commemoration of the Engineers and Engineering that made it possible to go to the moon and return safely to Earth, we designed and developed a 6-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) motion-based lunar lander simulator to replicate the Apollo Lunar Module (LM) cockpit interior, flight controls, displays, vehicle dynamics, audio, and out-the-window visualizations from "low gate" (approximately 500 feet altitude and 1,500 feet up-range) to the Apollo 11 landing site - roughly 100 seconds of flight. The cockpit displays, which were a combination of digital and analog gauges in the LM, were digitized and presented on several flat panel screens - including the Display and Keyboard (DSKY). This enables not only a re-creation of the instrumentation that the Apollo astronauts had available to them to pilot the LM, but also provides flexibility for designing, prototyping, and evaluating next-generation flight displays and control modes for future piloted lunar landing vehicles. This paper summarizes Draper's design and development of this motion-based lunar lander simulator to commemorate the Engineers and Engineering that made landing on the moon 50 years ago possible, and projects the opportunities that this capability enables for a human return to the moon.