OpenLuna Science

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**OL Science Team meetings occur weekly at the University of Western Ontario. Please contact Melissa (contact info at [1]) if you have relevant expertise & would like to participate in future meetings. Meeting notes will be posted here: OpenLuna Science.** References can be found here. Archived meeting notes can be found here.


OpenLuna Science Team Meeting Notes

Thursday Oct 29, 2009 Attendance: Matt, Mel, Cass, Marianne, Alaura, Dom, Paul Graham (OL project manager)

1. Paul overview of OL missions

2. Mel overview of science team progress to-date

3. Matt: remember to consider science instruments (eg. magnetometer, gravity) on orbiters

4. List of DELIVERABLES required from the science team: (from Paul)
a. Annual operating budget for science team (now + projected for future)
b. Potential landing sites
c. Conditions at LZs (also concerned about electrostatic characteristics RE: dust mitigation)
d. Power, mass, and location requirements for each rover or lander's science suite
e. Create log-ins for wiki (& join OL officially as a member)
f. Post links to our own publications on the wiki
g. Prove that we went to the Moon; eg. laser, explosives, radio-burst?
h. Science on sub-orbital micro-sat (eg. image the aurora/air glow, etc...)
i. Plan abstracts for LPSC (Lunar & Planetary Science Conference) & LEAG (Lunar Exploration & Analysis Group).

5. We will meet every Thurs at 12 pm (for 1-2 hrs) in P&A 213E. See you next week!




OpenLuna Science Team Tasks

July 28, 2009

Hope you're all enjoying the summer. It's been a few months since we've had an OpenLuna science team meeting, and we likely won't meet again until September. However, OpenLuna business is moving along, and we'll be having a meeting for team leads within the next few weeks (plus potential investors are starting to ask about our science plans). Before that meeting, I'd like to have our final table put together, listing (briefly, in point form) all required data for all proposed instruments, but most importantly, estimates for mass & power. Again, here's the task list:

1. Review the April 30th & May 7th meeting minutes, below;

2. For each of your instruments create a CONCISE table entry (1-2 sentences max, point form), and send to Rhiannon by Aug 10th. Make sure to include mass, power, volume, and cost, as accurately as possible (talk to experts if necessary to verify), as this will be used for instrument package calculations;

3. Add any references for your instruments/science to the References page (simply create account (top-right), log-in, and "edit" (top-left)). Include links when possible;

4. Check out Phil's top 15 equatorial landing sites and think about instruments for each site, and how we might rank the sites; file is on the FTP site.

Please send completed table entries to Rhiannon by Aug 10th. If you won't be able to meet this deadline please make sure your partner can handle it, or let me know! At our next meeting we will discuss prioritization of the 15 landing sites, as well as realistic instrument packages for each (including mass/power/size/cost calculations).

--Melissa



OpenLuna Science Team Meeting Notes

Thursday May 7, 2009 Attendance: Matt, Mel, Louisa, Ed, Rhiannon, Emily, Simon, Phil


Presentation from Phil regarding Landing Site. Before deciding instruments, we need to know the landing sites to determine what kind of science we can do.

Two possible landing spots:

   1)Ina (D-Caldera)
   -Pyroclastic deposit on Imbrium ejecta
   -Ina is in Lacus Felicitatis
   -It is not a depression, but a mound… a raised surface.
   -A few craters nearby
   -2X3 km
   -Bright material - unsure of what it exactly is.
   -Irregular domes lie on a flat floor.(very unusual site)
   -Very fresh, very young. 
   -No craters inside Ina, but many nearby.
   -Land in a smooth area, sample it. Drive to the edge of Ina, look at stratigraphy there. Go to the base of the dome, see if it is protruding up, etc.
   -What we have here is several different kinds of material, and different stratagraphic areas, within a few km.
   -Goal: Understand origin of Ina
   Instruments for Ina:
   -Multispectral imaging
   -MiniTES
   -APXS
   -Neutral gas analysis? (because Ina may be formed by release of gases… are there any volatiles still trapped in?)
   -Could gather a lot of information in just a 1000 m traverse.
   2)Reiner Gamma
   -High albedo swirls in Oceanus Procellarum.
   -Strong magnetic anomaly, 'mini-magnetosphere"
   -Partial shelter from charged particles - so possibly a good place to build an outpost
   -The main loop is about 30 km across.
   -Different ideas of how the swirls are created (ejecta? Space weathering?)
   -Which came first? Swirls or magnetic anomalies? 
   -Suggest travelling 40 or 50 km across this swirl with a magnetometer and charged particle detector and possibly multispectral camera.
   -NOTE: There are other places where you can do a shorter traverse, but those places are not as strong
   -You can't get a good picture of what is happening if you just do a 1000 m traverse.
   -Ideally you need to traverse back in the reverse direction. (therefore about 80 km in entirety)
   Both of these sites are on the list for Lunar Reconissance Orbiter which means they will be imaged in great detail soon.
   To figure out:
   -What instruments need a lander, and which need a rover?
   -Keep in mind: Bjarni's is a rover, so we should choose instruments based on that.
   -Western has expertise in APXS and spectroscopy, miniTES, etc.
   -Multi-spectral imaging is off-the-shelf.
   -Matt knows some people who can develop these.
   -Bjarni wants to keep things as much 'Western' as possible… so we need to know that we have people to analyze the data.
   -A lot of these technologies aren't too far from off-the-shelf, but we just need to make them able to travel in space.
   -Phil is willing to come up with a list of sites, if we specify what we want to do and how far we can travel.
   Another thing to do: We only have about 10 kg per rover, so we can come up with combinations of instruments we can put on them.
   List of instruments that NEED a rover:
   -A Magnetometer is more useful if you can make multiple measurements.
   -GPR
   -Camera
   -Mineralogy (APXS, minTES, ray guns)
   Do not necessarily need a rover:
   -Retroreflector (though we need rover to be able to put it in the right direction)
   -LIDAR
   -Dosimeter (radiation) (they take measurements for, say, 3 months)
   -LunaChem
   -Micrometeorite Flux
   -Plant Growth
   OTHER NOTES: 
   -LunaChem may not be what Bjarni is looking for (it is expensive and involves a lot of companies…. Bjarni wants to show that a mission can be done less expensively and less complicated and get a lot of science out of it still)
   -GPR is for habitat, so for the rover our top two instruments would be magnetometer and mineralogy instruments.
   -Habitat instruments: GPR and Dosimeter
   -Have to think in two different ways. With Bjarni we don't have to worry about coming back to those site… whereas with OpenLuna the big idea is for eventual habitation.
   -For Bjarni: SINGLE ROVER
   Some initial combinations:
   Ina (18-20 degrees north of the equator)
   -UV-Vis (150 g) [2 cameras: 300 g)
   -SSI: 4.2 kg (power = ?)
   -MiniTes: 2.9 kg (5.6 W, daily average of 0.3 W)
   -APXS: 600 g (at the smallest) (Power: 300 mW… but need something like plutonium to    released alpha particles)


   Reiner Gamma (6 - 8 degrees north of the equator)
   -UV-Vis (150 g) [2 cameras: 300 g)
   -SSI: 4.2 kg
   -Magnetometer: (390 g) (power = 3.6W?)
   -Charged  particle detector: To compare magnetic field with how many particles there are.





OpenLuna Science Team Meeting Notes

Thursday April 30, 2009, 1:30 pm


Attendence: Simon, Dom, Louisa, Oz, Bharavi, Emily, Rhiannon, Mel

Reviewing presentation given to Bjarni last friday: (discussion of top ~12 instruments)

   Lidar: Studies dust distribution around the moon. 
       Possible problems: power + weight 
                                   -Will need large amount of power due to very little dust around the moon 
                                   -Takes time to build and Bjarni wants to launch end of 2010 (not enough time to build Lidar) 
   GPR: Habitat building 
           Under the ground (protects against radiation) 
           Need to find out: how deep is regolith? 
                                       need to go about 5 m deep


   Mineralogy/elemental analysis 
       -not very enthusiastic about this for first mission… but Peter/Irene disagreed (they believe it should be on one of the first missions) 
       -very heavy and large 
       -Bjarni has connections for this possibly? (Mel do you remember anymore more about this?)
       -individual site-dependent, so it is not necessarily a priority, unless we know absolutely we are going back to that site for habitation. 
   Plant Growth Experiments: 
       -enclosed eco-system
       -step one is to seeing how well plants would grow in a Petri dish on moon. 
       -partner with university of guelph 
       -10 kg
       -dish, seeds, fluorescent light – not much weight, and would be good for PR 
       -arabidopsis(sp?) 
   Radioisotope Power: 
       -plutonium hard to get 
   Micrometeorite Flux 
       -camera+aerogel 
       -camera constantly taking pictures 
       -how sensitive would it need to be? 
       -need a microscopic camera 
       -find out resolution of microscopic camera on MER rovers 
       -maybe 10-100 microns. So flux less than 10 microns would not be able to be measured… but if we are concerned with particles larger than 3 microns, this is pretty good 
       -so as long as we can see the pit to at least 10 microns, we are good! 
       -simon (jdb’s student) may be able to help us out with simulations to figure out what size pits are caused by what sized particles. 
       -there is a guy doing his phd with aerogel in physics building 
       -blanket (*Rhiannon ask Margaret) 
       -how would we power this? 
       -put the same instrument in orbit possibly (the aerogel one)
       -it might be best to keep this on the lander 
   LunaChem 
       -understand oxidation of lunar regolith 
       -have not yet been successful in preserving the oxidation state of lunar regolith 
       -NASA may be interested in helping pay. 
       -slide in powerpoint about this (e-mail from Erin Tranfield) 
       -possibly take a lot of power
       -***Ask Bjarni about power for the instruments (on a good day/bad day) 
   Radiation: 
       -Dosimeter... may be easy to throw on there 
  Sintering: making bricks out of the lunar regolith
       Could test it on a lunar vacuum on earth in theory. 
       Throwing out this idea for now.
   Cameras: 
       -Bjarni hasn’t really worried about this yet… so we should add it to one of our instruments 

Contacts:

-Ralph Gellert: Guelph… building APSX 
-Peter Annon: Sensor and software (this guy is a space enthusiast) 
-Tim Haltigan: Study on what it would take to put a GPR on moon 
-Louisa going to e-mail stardust contacts 
-e-mail matt about the phd student who works with aerogel 
-would NASA fund the aerogel to get info on micrometeor flux? 

Chart of things to do for our "top-10" instruments:

1.	science goal 
2. 	science rational 
3.	proposed instruments 
4.	engineering specs (mass, power/dimensions/supporting gear) 
5.	Expertise at Western and/or elsewhere 
6.	Instrument Constraints (i.e. needs terminator, needs sun) 
7.	Landing site constraints 
8.	Cost 
9.	Outreach potential (Because Bjarni wants to make a program for grade schools using his rover, and this would be a part of it)
10.	Readiness level (how long to build, etc) 

Top-10 Science Goals/instruments: (including which science team members are assigned to which science goal; those of you who missed the meeting will be in brackets; please contact the non-bracketed person for instructions. Note that data for the table of instruments are due to Rhiannon by 5 pm Wed, after which the document will be forwarded to the Western research office, as part of Bjarni's mission proposal)

1. Dust lofting/LIDAR: Emily (+ Annemarie, Matt)
2. GPR: Dom (+ Laura)
3. Mineralogy/APXS, mini-TES, etc: Bhairavi,, Simon
4. Plant Growth: Simon (contact Matt Bamsey)
5. Micrometeorite flux: Rhiannon, Louisa (+ Rod)
6. LunaChem/Re-dox: Mel (contact Erin Tranfield, input from Kris)
7. Radiation : Rhiannon (+ Ed, Kris?)
8. Retroreflectors: Emily (+ Matt)
9. Magnetometer: Dom (+ Laura)
10. Cameras: Louisa (+ Haley, Alaura, Irene)
(Sintering (moon bricks) -- lower priority)


Next week: Figure out priorities of instruments, discuss landing sites with Phil.




OpenLuna Science Team Meeting #4, Notes

Thursday April 16, 2009, 2:30 pm

In attendance: Melissa, Matt, Haley, Dom, Annemarie, Emily


Melissa has a meeting with Bjarni, Peter, Oz and Laura on Monday about the moon. It might be about Bjarni's lunar rovers etc, so Mel will say that Open Luna has a science team already in existance.

Lunar Surface Overview / Landing Sites

Lowlands: Easy to get life support out of mare rock.

South Pole: Mel, Bhairavi, Dom would like to go here.

-Permanent sunlit regions, hydrogen. More highland material.
-Bhairavi suggests Schroedinger crater and sent a paper around about it. Preliminary Clementine data: 320 Km diameter, so pretty deep. Far side multi-ring peaked basin. Inner peak 150 Km diameter. Melt sheet rough in areas, smooth in others. Volcanic vent, pyroclastic evidence. Last year, an updated abstract and map agreeing with Shoemaker has more definite units on the map. Still Clementine data, but higher res. Bhairavi says landing there would be great because it's in the South Pole, Aitkin basin, deeper mantle material, would help us understand multi-ringed basins, and the paper already shows 3 potential landing sites. No composition information. Ring not low enough latitude for permanent sunlight.
-Harder to land near the poles, higher fuel costs with higher latitude:

Tangential surface velocity at a point on the moon = [2*Pi*Radius of Moon * cos(latitude)] / Orbital rotation period. Still - the moon has a slower rotation speed and lower mass than Earth, so latitude will have less of an effect there than it does on Earth.

-More difficult telemetry, tricky to maintain contact with the Earth
-For the outpost, we probably want something on the near side to start.
-Mel will talk to Gary (chief engineer) and see what kinds of latitudes they are optimized for. 

Other sites: Matt suggests: 1) The D - Unweathered high Ti Basalt, degassing (ex. Xe). Could probe for recent offgassing. 2) High fluorine creep terrain - Phosphorus, thorium, rare elements etc. Lunar formation because last to differentiate. Highland area but some mare too. Near side, mid latitude. Can see it on a gamma-ray map. Matt says we should have a list of backup sites - Some that are less perfect for science but more attainable.

Mel on landing sites: Want to pick a few good human outpost landing sites, but also science environments for rovers nearby. Want to characterize the environment for human habitation. Want to pick a few sites in the next weeks/ months.

Power Sources Haley: At LPSC Haley met a company who is developing small efficient radiogenic power sources. 10 - 60 W power, but they're still only on paper. NASA Glenn Research Centre. They're interested in developing stuff useful for scientists, so they have a scientist survey to find out what they should develop. They have 2 systems already.

Habs:

Annemarie: Are we burying this? Does that make it matter what kind of dirt we land in (highland regolith vs mare)?
Mel: Highland dirt is less abraisive and less terrible for rabbit and pig skin and eye health than mare dirt is.
Dom: How about on equipment? Habs, spacesuits, rovers, etc?
Mel: Plus we don't know where it's easier to dig as it's all compact. 
Everyone: Lots of crazy ideas, including: Can we microwave regolith to get blocks of moon dirt and use them to build regolith igloos? Does the microwaving need to be in an O-rich environment to work? We'll probably also have to blast to even be able to dig in the regolith to bury anything.

Homework Update:

Bhairavi - emailed but didn't hear back yet.
Simon - sent packages of info around about Apollo space science instruments. No one has read it yet.
Mel - talked to Erin Tranfield at NASA Ames and Kris about health. At Ames (this is the same girl who does pigskin tests with regolith) Erin has Lunachem, a pre phase A instrument which already exists and needs a ride to the moon. 48 Hour package fluorescence to determine reactivity state of the lunar regolith. Need to find out whether the oxidation state is long or short - long term nuiscance or (aside from the breathing sharp particles part of it) can we stop worrying after it neutralizes? She is willing to come and read over our notes, help and give tips etc. 
Rod - Numbers. Not here.
Rod & Simon - NASA NLSI goals for the moon were sent around. Everyone needs to read it to see whether anything jumps out at them.
Dom - No homework. 
Kris - Absent so no update.

Downselecting Instrument List:

Composition:

Haley - Mini mass spec ect (toaster size instrument at Carleton) is low sensitivity and high power, os we won't get any high res info unless lots of time, large sample size, high power if we use the miniaturized instrument. It's likely not useful to us at this point. 
Matt - It aims to further the science goal of composition, so maybe we should look into field XRD? It weighs less but requires several tens of KV of power. XRF missed Fe in marcosite, so probably not useful to us. Also, we can't compete when the major agencies are trying to do exact the same thing with lots more money.
Mel -Keep in mind: we only need basic characterization for ISRU - Otherwise it doesn't further our human effects research goals.

Orbiters: UV-Vis, Near IR only see a few micro metres into the surface. Thermal inertia gives similar data to THEMIS (slabs vs blocks in the Mid-IR). Gamma and neutron - difficult to interpret the data, but it goes down to a few metres. LRO has gamma for lunar ice.

Down the list from previous minutes:

1. Upscale to a MSM (Mobile Scene M?) like from MDA? We could just send up the cameras and keep the computers on Earth to sew the images back together. MDA wants it autonomous but why would we bother? Now it fits in a backpack and uses laptop power. Data is cool to look at but also makes 3D models at cm scale so you could create an environment like a flight simulator. Good for outreach, also for astronaut training/ orientation. Range of a few m. 3D LIDAR hogs power and is bigger, but range is ~ 1Km.

2. Reflector on rover/ lander: Weighs little, costs little. Good for measuring distance to the moon. It's the only Apollo instrument still in use. Aluminized mylar? No power requirements. It's also a good beaon when you're going back. Practical. All present agreed this is a good thing to include.

3. Mini-dome petri dish for growing things: Guelph wants to do it and Mel will talk to Mike to see whether someone is already working on it.

4. Micrometeorite flux measurements: Aerogel vs. blanket. Aerogel could capture for return, or have a camera pointed at it. Blanket would need sensors and need to be spread out (probably by rovers). Rhiannon (not present) is our expert so we should find from her what is the lower limit on size? For aerogel, would need a source: NASA, or Jeff from Physics and Astronomy at UWO is making conducting aerogels for a different purpose - maybe he could make us some. Perhaps Bjarni knows.

5. Dosimeter: This is easy, but has it already been done on Apollo? Maybe no need for it if it's been done already. If not, then we should definitely include it.

6. LIDAR for dust: What kind of lidar would be best? Mass, power requirements? Similar densities to dust/ soot on Earth - Mie scattering or Na Lidar. Emily will look into this.

7. Spectrometer / Mini TES: Later. See section on Composition above. We certainly would include only one or the other and not both, and more likely neither on the first trip.

8. Erin's project instrument: Already exists. Mel will ask about power, mass, logistics.

10. GPR: Dom says 5kg at 250 MHz to 5m depth. Power hungry (how much though?). Small backpack in size.

11. Lunar volatiles: Low priority

12. Save one rover just for PR: arm, camera, aerogel, things that don't need babysitting. Maybe the petri dish from Guelph.


Final Notes

Wiki: If you see something wrong, make changes - fix it! Changes are moderated by Paul.

FTP site: For papers, refs, resources etc that cannot strictly be put online. Just put links on the wiki for articles/ abstracts that can be linked to. Mel will ask Paul to set something up.

Next Meeting: April 23 at 2:30pm.

Tasks: Everyone read what Rod and Simon sent around this week.

** Anyone know what number 9 is? I missed that one or am mis-numbered somewhere... **




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