Marshall Space Flight Center
June 3 – August 9, 2019
Goals of your project/s:
The main goal was to determine if it were possible to land useable mass on the surface of the moon and how much mass could be landed using a commercial launch partner. If a sizable amount of mass was able to be landed, a mission could be designed to use the landed mass to explore lunar geological features known as lunar lava tubes. The work broke down into designing a cheap repeatable mission template using commercial and university partners to design/manufacture the launch vehicle, spacecraft, lander, and probe.
Describe what you did during the internship.
Using mass estimates obtained from Rocket Lab about their Electron rocket, I recreated their launch orbit in NASA’s Copernicus orbit modeling tool. I then modified the orbit to see if an Apollo-style or direct transfer type of orbit would allow the rocket to carry more mass. After exploring a few more options, I determined an optimum trajectory for the date the mission would take place. If the Electron rocket were to be selected as a commercial partner, I now had the mass the Electron could take to lunar orbit. Given the certain amount of mass calculated in orbit, I coded a ballistic descent simulation in Matlab to model the lander from the lunar orbit to the lunar surface. I analyzed several propulsion options and determined a couple of optimum options. The model is to have a spacecraft perform two burns. The first burn, or engine being turned on for a specified time, is a braking maneuver that slows the spacecraft down enough to begin deorbit. After that burn is performed, the engine is shut off while the spacecraft now falls parabolically towards the lunar surface. At a specified height above the lunar surface, the engine is started for a second time to perform a landing burn. During both burns, the engine burns into the velocity vector for the most efficient deceleration. Varying specific impulse, thrust, engine types, and the altitudes that the burns start at, an optimal braking and landing maneuver was found. Using this data, I was able to determine the mass that the rocket and mission could get to the lunar surface. After developing a functional ballistic model, I calculated the mass to the lunar surface for different commercial launch providers. I used Copernicus to model their orbits based on data collected from their payload user guides and the ballistic model. Next, I began to size down rocket engines and design descent engines based on the requirements from the ballistic sim’s calculations. I used engine data and advanced simulations to determine the best engine out of several routes and options. Finally, I had several low mass mission options to go to the moon.
Did you achieve your goals? What were the results and conclusions?
The main goal was to determine if it were possible to land useable mass on the surface of the moon and how much mass could be landed. The goals of my summer were accomplished. I determined that it is possible to land a small amount of mass on the lunar surface using a commercial launch provider. However, to balance the cost, the amount of mass to the lunar surface is related to the cost of the rocket. It may be better to upgrade an engine on some of the launch providers or select a more expensive launch provider in order to get more mass to the lunar surface. The mass needs to be high enough to have an apparatus capable of determining if there is a lava tube and if water exists in the lava tube. Some of the commercial options at most would be able to land enough mass to support a simple camera system. A camera may not be sufficient enough to gather enough information to confirm the existence of lava tubes. There may need to be a rover or equivalent device capable of some sort of movement that can transverse the lava tube while collecting data. Such a device will require more mass and different launch options must be considered.
Describe positive lessons learned from this experience:
NASA is the heart of the space industry. Some of the greatest people I’ve ever met were the people I worked with. NASA’s solid rocket branch is full of experts in all fields of rocketry and space systems. I learned a great deal from working directly with the experts. I learned that the strength of NASA comes from the people. The culture there is to the best work and assess all the details of a situation before coming to a conclusion. Every idea was valued, and every process was well thought out. I will continue this style of thinking outside of NASA. The team I worked on had a strong value of self-development. Whenever a new concept or solution was developed, it was developed with research from all aspects. If they didn’t know something, they learned it. That constant improvement kept the team sharp.
Describe negative lessons learned from this experience:
The biggest hindrance to the work my team and I did was government direction. Upon my first day, I had learned that the government had made huge cuts to things like the education branch. Decisions like these really hindered great ideas that my team and other brilliant minds at NASA came up with. I learned how to make the most of what you have within a team. Ideally, there would be more support for innovation, but sometimes you have to squeeze value out of every step. I also learned that there is a wide variety of mindsets within specialized teams like the one I worked with at NASA. Initially, it was difficult to synergize with such uniquely minded people. Eventually, I was able to learn how to communicate with a range of mindsets.