Moonraker: The Moon with High Resolution LiDAR
Jesse Eyer*, Hauke Hussmann, Gregory Jovanovic, Sotirios Zormpas, Klaus Gwinner, Konrad Willner, Ernst Hauber, Kristian Damkjer, Brad Cotten, To-bias Flecht, Steven Petten, Hilda Kinter and Indra Muthuvijayan
Abstract
With the Artemis missions planning to land astronauts on the lunar South Pole, there is a need for high GSD elevation maps of this region. The Moonraker mission will use a mapping LiDAR instrument to improve the state-of-the-art of lunar topographic maps, allowing mission planners to identify and de-risk landing sites for future missions. The Moonraker small satellite will operate at a 50 km altitude polar lunar orbit. Its LiDAR payload will have a 1X zoom mode and an 8X zoom mode. The instrument’s 1X mode will generate wide-area 3D maps of the Moon’s polar regions (60°S-90°S and 60°N-90°N) with 4 m GSD. The 8X mode will be used to scan individual landing sites at 0.5 m GSD, enabling small hazards such as boulders and craters to be identified. The data will be downlinked directly to Earth and processed into digital elevation mod-els (DEMs). Moonraker’s LiDAR data products will also be used for a variety of other scientific and exploration purposes, such as identifying deposits of water ice, measuring surface roughness, and studying surface features such as ancient volcanoes and impact craters. Moonraker is in a pre-phase A study, funded by the European Space Agency’s Small Missions for Exploration initiative.
