Bringing the Moon Within Reach

Seeing the moon rise over downtown Pittsburgh, most Pittsburghers would never guess how close the moon is to Pittsburgh, but to the engineers at Astrobotic, the moon is within their reach. Astrobotic, a space logistics company that specializes in making spacecraft that take payloads to the moon, has close ties to CMU and has several lander and rover designs. They currently have several contracts with NASA as well. As of the time of this writing, the Peregrine Lander is in the Moonshot Museum, but it will be shipped to Cape Canaveral for the planned launch in May. It will be launched on the Centaur Rocket.

Astrobotic was founded in 2007 by Red Whittaker, a CMU professor. The company’s headquarters are located near the Carnegie Science Center, and it employs around 150 people. They have worked hard to complete the Peregrine lander, as well as landers for other missions in the future. The Peregrine lander is designed to take approximately 198.5 pounds of payload from low earth orbit to the moon’s surface, in this case Sinus Viscositatis. It is approximately 8ft by 8ft by 6ft and is supported by four landing legs. It will be maneuvered by five small engines at the base and stabilized by clusters of four thrusters on the sides of the lander.

The Lander will be carrying the Surface Exosphere Alterations by Landers (SEAL), Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS), Photovoltaic Investigation on Lunar Surface (PILS), Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System (NIRVSS), Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS), Neutron Measurements at the Lunar Surface (NMLS), Peregrine IonTrap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS), Fluxgate Magnetometer

By Ian Wellman

(MAG), Mass Spectrometer observing lunar operations (MSolo), and Laser Retroreflector (LRA).

The SEAL instrument will be used to learn how regolith reacts with rocket propellent products and test for potential contamination. The LETS instrument tests how often radiation hits an area of the moon. The PILS instrument has experimental solar panels and will record each design’s output. The NIRVSS instrument will measure concentrations of water, carbon dioxide, and methane. The NSS instrument will be used to measure the total amount of hydrogen in the ground, down to a depth of three feet. The NMLS instrument will be used to look for hydrogen and rare earth metals in the ground and help calibrate measurements taken from orbit. The PITMS instrument will measure volatiles, elements with low boiling points, their movement across the moon, and how the moon’s exosphere changes. The moon has an atmosphere with less than one trillionth the pressure of Earth’s. The MAG will measure magnetic fields of the Earth and the moon, and it will explore underground electrical conduction and magnetic anomalies. The MSolo will identify which gasses came from the lander and which came from the moon’s surface. The LRA will be used to determine the distance from the lander and other spacecraft. In addition to these science experiments, Peregrine will be testing new solar panels that can be made with lunar materials.

For more information about Astrobotic, go to Astrobotic.com, or search for the Peregrine Lander at nasa. gov. Whenever you look up at the moon, remember the moon is closer than you think.