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ESPA Travels to the Moon

13 November 2009

 

Rocket ships, lunar explosions and a moon base all sound like the work of a science fiction movie, but on October 9, 2009, NASA’s LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) impacted the moon in a search for water ice, setting the stage for scientific study, future exploration and a possible lunar research station.

Moog CSA Engineering’s EELV Secondary Payload Adapter (ESPA) was used by the LCROSS designers as a primary hub for the free-flyer satellite.  It also served as a mounting platform for science instruments, solar array, power control electronics, batteries, attitude control and data handling/communications modules.

LCROSS traveled 5.6 million miles to target Cabeus Crater, a permanently shadowed region on south pole of the Moon.  At 54,000 miles above Moon’s surface, LCROSS separated from the upper stage of its Centaur rocket and watched as it impacted the lunar surface at 1.5 miles per second.  The instruments aboard LCROSS observed the dust plume and transmitted data back to Earth for four minutes before the spacecraft plunged into the moon itself, creating its own crater.

LCROSS was a secondary payload mission that was selected to launch with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) when the mission was upgraded to an Atlas V launch vehicle.  The LRO itself was launched sitting on top of the LCROSS/ESPA shepherding satellite during liftoff.  LRO is currently mapping the moon’s cratered surface from a 31-mile-high orbit and also observed and analyzed the LCROSS lunar impact.

ESPA was originally developed as part of a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate due to a growing interest in utilizing the entire launch capacity of a system and missions using small specialized satellites.  The ESPA Ring allows the launch of six small satellites with a large primary payload to “share a ride to space”.  The first on-orbit mission for ESPA was STP-1 in 2007 aboard an Atlas V launch vehicle.

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