While in-situ Moon resources may be the key to any future lunar space-based economy, finding those resources is a key challenge. Surrey Satellite Technology’s Samantha Rowe, speaking at the 2021 Smallsat conference, presented a small satellite mission that includes Canadian participation that may lay the foundation for lunar resource exploitation.
Rowe gave a presentation on the proposed Lunar Volatile & Mineralogy Mapping Orbiter (VMMO) mission. VMMO is a follow-up to the discovery of resources on the South Pole of the Moon and aims to more precisely map out the “location and extent” of minerals, lunar water ice, and other potentially valuable resources that could be harvested by future lunar mining operations. The proposal is a collaboration between Montreal based MPB Communications Inc, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, The University of Surrey Space Center, the University of Winnipeg and Lens R&D, and is being done on behalf of the European Space Agency.
The orbiter is comparatively small and simple: a 12U CubeSat weighing 22kg, powered by two tracking solar arrays, one body-mounted solar array, and a pair of 77Wh lithium-ion batteries. It uses a pair of IFM nano thrusters (ion thrusters) and uses ESA’s LEON 3 “processor on a chip.” The VMMO payload, called the Lunar Volatile and Mineralogy Mapper (LVMM) is a multi-wave chemical LIDAR developed by MPB Communications. Weighing less than 7kg, the presentation’s accompanying materials say that it includes “4W fibre lasers at 532nm, 1064nm and 1560nm,” along with “a broadband multispectral receiver” using several different types of imagers and “a laser beam expander with a pan/tilt mirror.”
This allows the payload to gather data in two distinct modes: “Active mode” and “Passive mode.” Active mode uses the payload’s lasers to capture images of permanently dark parts of the Moon — principally the Shackleton, Faustini and Cabeus craters — to discover the location of water ice and other potential resources. Passive mode turns off the lasers, and uses the multispectral receiver to capture images of potential in-situ resources during the lunar day, from the equator to the South Pole.
They want VMMO to be launched in 2024, as part of a NASA CLPS mission or as part of the NASA SLS Artemis 2 mission. After the thirty-day flight to the Moon, the orbiter will heat up its propellant, be launched from the transport unit, use its ion thrusters for detumbling, and spend ten to thirty days in a commissioning orbit as the LVMM payload is commissioned. Once that’s finished, the thrusters will be fired again to transfer the orbiter to its operational orbit. The transfer is estimated to take around 100 days.
Rowe explained that, once the transfer is done, it will have been placed in a somewhat irregular operational orbit. VMMO’s operational orbit would be a lunar frozen polar orbit at a 90° inclination — but that orbit will be made somewhat eccentric, with a periapsis of only 41 km and an apoapsis of 200 km. This eccentric orbit will enable the orbiter to get as close as possible to the South Pole and facilitate data-gathering.
When beneath 80° in latitude, near its orbit’s periapsis, the active mode payload equipment will be powered up, and the lasers and imagers will gather data on polar volatiles and other resources. Between that latitude and the lunar equator, the passive mode equipment will gather data on the sunlit parts of the Moon. When farther away from the Moon and closer to its orbital apoapsis, the Orbiter will process the data and transmit it to ESA’s Lunar Pathfinder satellite for further transmission to Goonhilly Station on Earth.
The operational mission is estimated to last slightly more than 210 days.
During the Q&A session, Rowe said that the lunar VMMO will be launching after Pathfinder, since the orbiter requires Pathfinder for Earth communications. She was also asked about decommissioning. She said it will require an end of life maneuver to bring the orbiter down on the lunar surface. She said it will need careful analysis to ensure it doesn’t “collide with the Apollo landing sites.”
Though this is all still in the proposal phase, ESA is taking the proposal seriously. VMMO won the SysNova challenge from ESA’s Discovery & Preparation Programme in 2018, and were directed to undertake a Phase A study for ESA.
According to a followup email exchange between SpaceQ and MBP Communications’ Roman Kruzelecky, the Phase A study involved “reviewing and defining the detailed mission requirements … and providing supporting simulations to validate that the mission is feasible.” He said that “ESA is currently preparing the ground and paperwork for the follow-on Phase B, C and D … [and] are negotiating with NASA for the required Earth to Moon transportation for VMMO as part of existing space exploration agreements with NASA.”
Kruzelecky pointed to Canada’s own CSA as being a critical factor. Kruzelecky said that “the VMMO mission implementation is now largely dependent on getting the relevant required continued support from the Canadian Space Agency and UK Space.”
If they get the needed support they expect to begin Phase B, VMMO’s first implementation phase, in the fall of 2021.