Lunar Interior Exploration by Japanese Lunar Penetrator Mission, LUNAR-A.

Lunar interior properties from the GRAIL mission

The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission has sampled lunar gravity with unprecedented accuracy and resolution. The lunar GM, the product of the gravitational constant G and the massM, is very well determined. However, uncertainties in the mass and mean density, 3345.56±0.40 kg/m, are limited by the accuracy of G. Values of the spherical harmonic degree-2 gravity coefficients...

Cartography for Lunar Exploration: 2008 Status and Mission Plans

The initial spacecraft exploration of the Moon in the 1960s–70s yielded extensive data, primarily in the form of film and television images, which were used to produce a large number of hardcopy maps by conventional techniques. A second era of exploration, beginning in the early 1990s, has produced digital data including global multispectral imagery and altimetry, from which a new generation of...

Characterizing Locations for Future Lunar Exploration Using Recent Mission

Activity Planning for a Lunar Orbital Mission

ligence technology to address the challenging problem of activity planning for a lunar orbital NASA mission: the Lunar Atmospheric and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE). AI technology can help solve a given problem through a software system that automates some aspect of the problemsolving process. However, often, a significant aspect of the benefit an AI scientist can provide is in terms of def...

Astronaut Lunar Field Exploration Training

Introduction: Astronauts have not explored the lunar surface since December 1972. NASA's new plans for the manned return to the Moon revolve around the construction and establishment of a lunar polar outpost starting around the year 2020. Therefore, in order to achieve NASA's new exploration objectives it seems prudent to dust off certain aspects of the Apollo playbook. The six Apollo lunar lan...