contain frozen water and other volatile elements. Although the existence of these ma terials is not absolutely essential for our plans, frozen lunar volatiles would greatly accelerate the human breakout into space. Water at the Moon’s poles would literally be the “icing on the cake,” providing propellants, reagents for chemical processing, life support materials and other useful products with virtually no processing. In essence, finding lunar volatiles would be like locating the mythical Northwest Passage to the Orient. NASA Lunar Observer Given the importance of mapping the Moon’s resources and the tantalizing possibility of finding lunar polar volatiles it is unfortunate that lunar polar prospecting missions have not yet been flown, NASA has attempted to fly major lunar polar orbiting science missions as “new-starts” without success. Part of the problem has been the relatively high cost of these proposed missions. For example, the current NASA lunar polar orbiting mission, entitled Lunar Observer, is likely to cost about half a billion dollars if (and hopefully when) it flies in the late 1990s. This will be a very capable spacecraft which will contain a multitude of important science tools (see Figure 2). It is worthy of our support (and indeed it has the strong support of the Institute). However it will be too late. Why a Lunar Prospector? We need to map the Moon now before our nation makes the so-called pathway decision about how to proceed with human exploration and settlement of the solar system. The NASA Office of Exploration proposes to outline possible paths so that a U.S. President can make decisions of this sort before the mid ’90s. The Lunar Observer, unfortunately will not be ready to fly in time to provide lunar data for this decision. The spacecraft is based on the space Mars Observer craft. This spacecraft will not be released for use in a lunar mission until the prime vehicle is safely in flight. Although this fact alone means that Lunar Observer will be too late for our purposes, there is another more basic problem. The Lunar Observer mission will not come up for flight funding for several years. Old lunar hands have been frustrated for twenty years in trying to get this type of flight accomplished. We must realize that there is no guarantee that the NASA effort will be successful this time around. SSI’s Efforts Therefore, SSI has been engaged for several years in an increasingly visible series of efforts to enable the flight of a suitable lunar polar probe. SSI has long realized the utility of a relatively simple robotic probe with the capability of mapping the Moon’s resources and answering the question of the existence of frozen lunar volatiles. In 1985, the Institute commissioned a study by James French of the Jet Propulsion Laboratories. This study showed that such a modest mission was feasible and could be flown using existing solid upper stages such as PAM D and PAM DI I to launch the probe from Low Earth Orbit (see Figure 3). The results of this study were presented to the President’s National Commission on Space in both written form and as part of SSI’s invited briefings to that body. The Commission, in its 1986 report Pioneering the Space Frontier, made several strong positive recommendations that such a mission be flown. (See Events schedule, page 6.) Figure 3. Lunar probe design from SSI's 1985 study as shown to the President’s National Commission on Space. 1987 was a key year for SSI Lunar Prospector efforts. Gregg Maryniak met with members of a Jet Propulsion Laboratory Team who had developed a plan to use a small ion-engine propelled spacecraft which could be deployed from a Shuttle Get-Away Special cannister (Figure 4). This small craft would slowly spiral away from the Earth and then down to low lunar polar orbit over a two year period. SSI Senior Associate Ron Jones prepared beautiful, professional quality photo- raphic representations of both the Jim French and Lunar Get-Away Special designs. Maryniak attended “Satellite School” at the University of California, Berkeley. NASA Briefings SSI founder, Gerard O'Neill and Gregg Maryniak held two meetings with NASA Administrator James Fletcher to discuss the possibility of simple lunar probes. SSI requested and received support from other space organizations including Hughes, Intelsat, the National Space Society, the Planetary Society and the World Space Foundation as well as individuals such as Professor Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Study who expressed to the Admnistrator their support for such missions. In our discussions with Dr. Fletcher, we also described a type of mission that could utilize one of several “surplus” Atlas-E rockets that have been made available to the government by the Department of Defense for a tiny fraction of the original cost of building and launching. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory had proposed several possible small spacecraft that could take advantage of these vehicles. One of these so-called “Quicksats” was designed to carry a suitable mapping and hydrogen sensing device to lunar polar orbit. Two-part Strategy SSI’s strategy on Lunar Prospector has two components. First, we are attempting to show NASA and key national leaders the importance of a quick and simple lunar mission which could detect possible water ice at the poles. There are various reasons why such a mission is vital right now. Some of these include the necessity of having this information prior to making decisions about future human exploration and the intrinsic value of demonstrating low-cost small space probes as an alternative to the standard “full-up” planetary probes which have become so difficult to fly. Secondly, in parallel with our educational efforts, we are working towards a partially or perhaps completely private class of lunar probes. Naturally, there are many financial and technical issues that must be resolved before any organization or group of organizations can assemble such a mission. But the work has begun! 1988 saw an acceleration of our plans. (Continued on page 5) Figure 4. Ion-propelled Lunar Getaway Special
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