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Early Operations Flight Correlation of the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration (LLCD) on the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE)The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission launched on September 7, 2013 with a one month cruise before lunar insertion. The LADEE spacecraft is a power limited, octagonal, composite bus structure with solar panels on all eight sides with four vertical segments per side and 2 panels dedicated to instruments. One of these panels has the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration (LLCD), which represents a furthering of the laser communications technology demonstration proved out by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). LLCD increases the bandwidth of communication to and from the moon with less mass and power than LROs technology demonstrator. The LLCD Modem and Controller boxes are mounted to an internal cruciform composite panel and have no dedicated radiator. The thermal design relies on power cycling of the boxes and radiation of waste heat to the inside of the panels, which then reject the heat when facing cold space. The LADEE mission includes a slow roll and numerous attitudes to accommodate the challenging thermal requirements for all the instruments on board. During the cruise phase, the internal Modem and Controller avionics for LLCD were warmer than predicted by more than modeling uncertainty would suggest. This caused concern that if the boxes were considerably warmer than expected while off, they would also be warmer when operating and could limit the operational time when in lunar orbit. The thermal group at Goddard Space Flight Center evaluated the models and design for these critical avionics for LLCD. Upon receipt of the spacecraft models and audit was performed and data was collected from the flight telemetry to perform a sanity check of the models and to correlate to flight where possible. This paper describes the efforts to correlate the model to flight data and to predict the thermal performance when in lunar orbit and presents some lessons learned.
Document ID
20150018332
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Presentation
Authors
Peabody, Hume (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD United States)
Yang, Kan (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD United States)
Nguyen, Daniel (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD United States)
Cornwell, Donald (NASA Headquarters Washington, DC United States)
Date Acquired
September 24, 2015
Publication Date
August 3, 2015
Subject Category
Lunar And Planetary Science And Exploration
Communications And Radar
Report/Patent Number
GSFC-E-DAA-TN24633
Meeting Information
Meeting: Thermal and Fluids Analysis Workshop (TFAWS 2015)
Location: Silver Spring, MD
Country: United States
Start Date: August 3, 2015
End Date: August 7, 2015
Sponsors: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.
Keywords
LADEE
Thermal
Flight Correlation
LLCD

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