Project: Mun Scan
Universal Aerospace is on their way to the Mun, we’ve designed a Mun lander and a miniature rover to be deployed on the surface, but first we need to scout out a good landing site!
We’ve already sent an unmanned probe to flyby the Mun so we don’t need much scientific equipment, we’re sending a probe equiped with SCANsat scanners and the stock survey scanner, as well as a couple of gravioli detectors because they provide science for every biome in high orbit.
Since the payload is very small, not much is required for the launch vehicle, we’ve got a 1m stage to reach orbit and add about 600 delta-v to our hohmann transfer to the Mun and a Space Y booster to get us out of the atmosphere (parachutes added for recovery of the booster).
After the transfer burn I set up a correction to change the inclination and closest approach of the Mun encounter so we can easily get into a polar orbit without an inclination change.
Here’s the satellite deployed once we entered the Mun’s sphere of influence.
To scan the mun we remained on a 90 degree inclination orbit at 337km to cover the most area for a few days.
When scanning was complete we changed the altitude of our orbit so we’d be able to get science high above the Mun and science in space close to the Mun about half of the time to ensure we had gravioli measurements in every biome at both low and high altitudes.
Now the mission is over, and we’ve sent back the science from the trip (over 2000!) we just have to use our data to pick a landing site with easy access to multiple biomes and we’ll see you next time!