| The mission plan The mission is scheduled to begin within 2002. LunarSAT will be launched as an auxiliary payload aboard an Ariane 5 (ASAP) and will be placed in a geosynchronous transfer orbit. At the right point and time, half of the LunarSAT's main engines and two thrusters will fire in order to inject the 100 kg spacecraft near the Earth-Sun weak stability boundary, almost 1.5 million km away from the Earth to the direction of the Sun.
Near this area, the Earth's gravitational field is still powerful than the Sun's, but the solar gravity perturbations are of the same magnitude with the Earth's attractive force. These perturbations, in connection with small firings of the LunarSAT's main engines, will guide the satellite towards the Moon. In this way, a considerable amount of fuel is conserved for more critical and valuable operations, later on. This Earth - Moon transfer method, that is going to be used for the first time from the LunarSAT orbiter, is called Belburno Transfer or Weak Stability Boundary Transfer (WSB). LunarSAT
will meet with the Moon over it's South Pole, where it will fire its main engines in order to achieve an elliptical polar orbit around the Earth's natural satellite, with it's perilune 100 km over the south pole and an apolune of 2300 km. Within a few months, it will measure the lunar environment properties and map the lunar surface (especially the South Pole area in great detail). |
