Rover Traverse Planning to Support a Lunar Polar Volatiles Mission

Studies of lunar polar volatile depositsare of interest for scientific purposes to understandthe nature and evolution of the volatiles, and alsofor exploration reasons as a possible in situ resource toenable long term exploration and settlement of theMoon. Both theoretical and observational studies...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNASA Center for AeroSpace Information (CASI). Conference Proceedings
Main Authors Heldmann, J L, Colaprete, A C, Wettergreen, D, Elphic, R C, Bussey, B, McGovern, A, Beyer, R, Lees, D, Deans, M C, Otten, N, Jones, H
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published Hampton NASA/Langley Research Center 20.10.2015
Subjects
Exploration
Polar environments
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Summary:Studies of lunar polar volatile depositsare of interest for scientific purposes to understandthe nature and evolution of the volatiles, and alsofor exploration reasons as a possible in situ resource toenable long term exploration and settlement of theMoon. Both theoretical and observational studies havesuggested that significant quantities of volatiles exist inthe polar regions, although the lateral and horizontaldistribution remains unknown at the km scale and finerresolution. A lunar polar rover mission is required tofurther characterize the distribution, quantity, andcharacter of lunar polar volatile deposits at thesehigher spatial resolutions. Here we present two casestudies for NASA’s Resource Prospector (RP) missionconcept for a lunar polar rover and utilize this missionarchitecture and associated constraints to evaluatewhether a suitable landing site exists to support an RPflight mission.