MoonRise: A US Robotic Sample-Return Mission to Address Solar System Wide Processes

Details MoonRise: A US Robotic Sample-Return Mission to Address Solar System Wide Processes MoonRise: A US Robotic Sample-Return Mission to Address Solar System Wide Processes

Oct 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.4922j&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #49.22

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Scientific paper

The MoonRise lunar sample-return mission is currently funded to perform a Phase A Concept Study as part of NASA's New Frontiers Program. Exploration of the great (d = 2500 km) South Pole-Aitken basin has been assigned high priority in several NRC reports. MoonRise would be the first US robotic sample-return mission from another planetary surface. Key strengths of the MoonRise mission include:
1. Most importantly, MoonRise will sample the SPA basin's interior on the Moon's southern far side, instead of the same small region near the center of the near side as all previous (Apollo and Luna) sampling missions. Science objectives for the SPA sample-return mission fall into three main categories: (1) testing the impact cataclysm hypothesis, with its profound implications for the evolution of the Solar System and for life on the Earth at 3.9 Ga; (2) constraining basin-scale impact processes; and (3) constraining how the Moon's interior varies laterally on a global scale, and with depth on a scale of many tens of kilometers; and thus how the lunar crust formed and evolved.
2. MoonRise will greatly enhance scientific return by using a sieving mechanism to concentrate small rock fragments. As an example, for rocks ɳ mm in size (minimum dimension) and a target regolith of approximately average grain-size distribution, the acquisition yield will be improved by a factor of 50.
3. MoonRise will obtain a total of at least one kilogram of lunar material, including 100 g of bulk, unsieved soil for comparison with remote sensing data.
4. MoonRise will exploit data from LRO, Kaguya, Chandrayaan-1, and other recent remote-sensing missions, in particular LRO's Narrow Angle Camera (NAC), to ensure a safe landing by avoidance of areas with abundant boulders, potentially hazardous craters, and/or high slopes mapped from high resolution stereo images.

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