SpaceIL Privately-Funded Lunar Lander On Way to Moon

Former Google Lunar XPRIZE (GLXP) competitor, and Israeli nonprofit, SpaceIL has launched a (largely) privately funded spacecraft to land on the Moon. See Space.com article.

The total budget for the mission is estimated at US$95 million. 

Funding for the mission has predominantly been from private donations, most notably from Israeli billionaire Morris Kahn and American philanthropist Sheldon Adelson. The team has also attracted support from the Israeli Space Agency (ISA) and a number of aerospace companies and research institutions in Israel. The SpaceIL team was founded as a nonprofit organization wishing to promote scientific and technological education in Israel. 

The photo below shows their beautiful spacecraft named Beresheet.

The Beresheet Robotic Lunar Lander (credit SpaceIL)

After dozens of other fundraising approaches were attempted by the various GLXP competitors around the world, it is interesting and impressive to see SpaceIL succeed through their model which combines national prestige and an education-oriented nonprofit foundation.

The team's precise plans beyond this first mission are yet to be clearly articulated but the company that led the development and integration of their lander, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), has already announced a partnership with the German space company OHB System to offer the commercial delivery of payloads to the lunar surface for the European Space Agency (ESA). Under the agreement, IAI will handle integration of payloads onto the lander and be responsible for launch arrangements. OHB will be the prime contractor for those missions, managing work with ESA and payload developers.

Although the Beresheet mission comes too late to claim the Google Lunar XPRIZE prize money, it undoubtably represents a fantastic achievement of the prize's main goal, namely to stimulate new commercially-viable models for lunar exploration.

The Beresheet mission is sure to kick off a wave of similar small lunar surface missions with substantial commercial involvement in the coming years. We look forward to seeing other GLXP teams, and their spin-offs like our very own ispace, achieve lunar surface access in the not too distant future.

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Cameras

It just wouldn't be as fun sending a spaceship to the moon if we couldn't have a look around with it once it's there. Also we wouldn't be able to meet the requirements of the GLXP either, so the Lander and Rover will both be equipped with cameras. The Lander's camera can operate both in still image mode and in video mode at 10 to 15 frames per second. It is mounted on an arm extending from the side of the Lander between the two egress ramps. It will be used to film the descent of the spacecraft to the moon as well as the Rover as it disembarks from the Lander and begins its lunar journey.

The Rover's camera can also capture still images as well as video footage. It will be used to film the journey across the moon and capture the high definition footage of the lunar surface which must be beamed back to Earth to complete the GLXP mission. White Label Space intends to use commercially available, rugged cameras which will be subjected to a full space-qualification program. The team is currently looking for industrial partners to provide the cameras used on the mission. This would be yet another one-of-a-kind marketing opportunity for any interested companies as the cameras used to capture the first images from the moon's surface for over 40 years will surely gain world-wide exposure. No pun intended!

The Lunar Lander

The Lander vehicle has been designed entirely by the White Label Space team. The main body of the Lander is shaped like a hexagon. On three of its six sides the landing legs will be attached and the remaining three sides will be unobstructed to permit accommodation of equipment and payload units that require external view factors. The landing legs provide excellent support points for on-board equipment which would otherwise apply high cantilever loads to the Lander’s sides during various mission stages.

It’s impossible to predict the exact landing site of the WLS spacecraft on the moon and there could be obstacles which could block the Rover’s path. For this reason the Lander has been designed with not one but two egress ramps which the Rover can use to reach the moon’s surface, if one is blocked then the Rover can use the other. The ramps are attached to two of the sides where landing legs are attached to make use of the support that they can provide. Attached to the third leg is the High Gain Antenna which is used to transmit data between the Lander and the team controlling it on earth. The Rover sits atop the Lander and is held in place by a Hold-Down and Release Mechanism (HDRM) based on a pyrotechnic bolt which will be detonated to release the Rover after landing.

As White Label Space's GLXP mission will be financed by advertisements the naming of the Lunar Rover is for sale. So any companies wishing to seize an opportunity to have their brand forever associated with mankind's return to the moon should contact the White Label Space team. Sponsoring the GLXP mission could lead to the headlines around the world telling of how the " Rover" was the first privately funded craft to explore the moon's surface; don't miss this chance to make marketing history!

Breaking, Descent and Landing

Now here is where the fun really begins, it's not every day you land a robot on the moon! The Breaking Stage solid motor is used to reduce the spacecraft's speed on its approach. The direct descent landing trajectory chosen means the Lander can touch down just after lunar dawn allowing the maximum amount of time to complete the mission but also requires the timing of this burn to be very precise. To achieve this precision an on-board timer is used to trigger the ignition when the Lander passes through a specific lunar altitude. After the Lander separates from the Breaking Stage it follows a gravity turn trajectory (illustrated in the image) to the surface using its own rocket engine to control its descent. During the final approach to touchdown the Lander determines its altitude and vertical velocity using a small radar altimeter and its horizontal velocity by a landing camera coupled with the altimeter and rate gyros. Finally, after travelling a quarter of a million miles, the Lander touches down on the moon's surface and prepares to deploy the Rover and complete the GLXP mission.

Guidance and Navigation Control

Throughout the mission it is vital that the position and orientation of the spacecraft are precisely known so that it can be guided to the chosen landing site on the moon. Standard ground tracking techniques are used to accomplish this.

Soon after the Trans Lunar Injection burn and stage separation, a first Mid-Course Manoeuvre (MCM) is performed using the Braking Stage Reaction Control System. A sufficiently large delta-V for the MCM is provided for this burn that serves to compensate for injection inaccuracies of the solid motor. One or more subsequent MCM manoeuvres are performed throughout the rest of the lunar transit to accurately target the landing site. Following this the breaking stage is used to slow the spacecraft to a safe velocity for landing on the moon.

Attitude Control

The orientation or attitude of the spacecraft is critical at all stages of the mission. After the Trans Lunar Injection stage is complete the spacecraft stack begins its three day long journey to the moon. The difference in temperature between the side exposed to the sun and the side in the shade can be as high as 135 degrees. This temperature gradient can cause structural damage to the spacecraft and effect the performance of the Breaking Stage solid motor. To ensure that the temperature is distributed evenly a monopropellant Reaction Control System (RCS) is used to slowly spin the spacecraft about the flight axis.

The RCS is also used to perform any Mid-Course Manoeuvres (MCMs) needed during the lunar transit and to optimise the spacecraft's attitude for the breaking burn on approach to the lunar surface.

Trans Lunar Injection (TLI) Stage

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle can be used to launch the spacecraft stack into Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) but then a second rocket impulse is needed to transfer from this orbit into the Lunar Transfer Orbit (LTO) required to complete the mission.

This part of the mission is referred to as the Trans Lunar Injection (TLI) stage and is accomplished using a Star30BP solid motor. The spacecraft is first stabilised by spinning it about its flight axis using a small motor which thrusts in the tangential direction before the Star30BP fires to inject the stack into LTO. A yo-yo de-spin mechanism is used to slow the craft's rotation after the TLI stage is complete, a video demonstrating a yo-yo de-spin can be viewed here. If either the Soyuz Fregat or Falcon 9 launch vehicle is used then the spacecraft stack is placed directly in LTO so the separate TLI stage rocket is not needed.

The Launch Vehicle

Every space mission begins with a rocket launch and the mission planned by White Label Space is no different. The launch will place the spacecraft in a parking orbit above the earth before it is propelled further to LTO (Lunar Transfer Orbit). From here the spacecraft follows an orbit which brings it increasingly under the effect of the moon’s gravity until, after a three day journey, it reaches the moon.

The launch will be carried out using one of three low-cost launch vehicles with which the spacecraft stack designed by White Label Space is compatible; the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-XL) developed in India, Russia’s Soyuz Fregat or SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

The larger size of the Soyuz Fregat and Falcon-9 launchers allows for additional payload capacity. These launch vehicles could carry one or more other passenger spacecraft to LTO, potentially including other GLXP competitors. This would considerably reduce the launch costs incurred by each organisation and so offers a clear financial advantage to any private or government funded missions.

While the Soyuz and Falcon launch vehicles can deliver a payload directly to LTO the PSLV-XL does not have this capability and so an additional rocket would be needed to perform what is known as a TLI procedure (Trans Lunar Injection). Once the TLI stage rocket has inserted the stack into LTO, it separates and is discarded, leaving the three remaining components of the spacecraft stack; the braking stage, Lander and Rover, to continue on their course to the lunar surface.

Opening Space Up to Small and Medium Sized Businesses

Many small parts make the whole, and assembling a mission to compete in the Google Lunar X PRIZE requires the combination of many high-tech parts, in-house developments (like the rover developed by White Label Space in Japan) and sponsorship.

White Label Space recognises that the foundations of nations’ economies rely not on large corporations, but on the millions of Small to Medium Enterprizes (SMEs).

If you want to associate your SME with a truly exceptional 21st century endeavour, then for as little as €100 (tax deductible in some countries), you can sponsor White Label Space, become part of our mission, and receive a Certificate documenting your contribution.

Naturally larger sponsor packages and exposure are available, yet for a small amount you can be part of something great - the next Space Race.

Take a look through our website to learn more about us and how we're assembling our Google Lunar X PRIZE mission - your sponsorship contribution to White Label Space will leverage awareness of your brand far higher than anything on earth.

Sponsorship via a Pay Pal donation can be made HERE.

Our Promotional Video:

A Presentation about Sponsoring White Label Space:

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Mission Concept

The White Label Space team is developing an exciting, low-cost and reliable mission for the Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP).

Learn more about our mission on these links:

• Launch Vehicle
• The Lunar Lander
• Rover
• Cameras
• Lander Propulsion System
• Breaking, Descent and Landing
• Guidance Navigation and Control
• Attitude Control
• Trans-Lunar Injection Stage

For a detailed description of mission, click on the document image below:

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If you have particular skills in space engineering or your organization is interested in becoming an Official Partner of White Label Space, please send an email to: system@whitelabelspace.com

If you are interested in sending a non-GLXP payload to the surface of the Moon, we would like to study your interface and design requirements so please send an email to: payloads@whitelabelspace.com

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Valve Controllers, Data Compression and Altimeters

Our open source partner Lunar Numbat is dedicated to developing low-cost solutions for mission-critical systems in our GLXP mission. Here are three specific projects they are currently investigating:

Valve Controller

A key component in a lunar lander is the valve that controls the throttle setting of the engine used for the descent to the lunar surface. Lunar Numbat has started developing a design for an Arduino board to communicate with the electric motor and the valve position sensor.

Lunar Numbat plans to test its new valve controller design on AUSROC 2.5, a sounding rocket currently being developed by the Australian Space Research Institute (ASRI). The valve, gear assembly and electric motor are shown in the picture.

The Arduino board will run embedded C++ software and use a modular event driven protocol called Aiko. Aiko embodies the embedded controller and device side of a modular framework and generic event-driven communications protocol. There will also be a host-side design and implementation of that protocol. The valve controller will interface with the rest of the control system via a CAN bus.

Video Compression

Lunar Numbat is working on an idea to use JPEG2000 for rapid on-the-fly video compression. JPEG2000 offers certain advantages compared to other data formats in that it makes it possible to compress the data stream by dropping layers. Lunar Numbat envisions an approach based on concurrent data prioritization, optimized be a 'task based' approach.

Already Lunar Numbat has found in experiments have shown that a 3MB image can have its sized reduced by a factor of four in just half a second. In the near future Lunar Numbat will post an example of the video compression to the internet.

Radar Altimeter

The Chandryaan-1 Moon Impact Probe (MIP) inspired Lunar Numbat to look into developing a simple radar altimeter based on commercial technologies. The MIP featured a Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave radar altimeter capable of measuring the altitudes up to about 5km above the lunar surface.

Lunar Numbat aims to use software defined radio technology to implement its solution and hopes to test the altimeter on a cheap flying vehicle such as a balloon or remote control aircraft.

About Lunar Numbat

Lunar Numbat is a distributed organization based in Australa and New Zealand, which was created to develop open source hardware and software solutions for the White Label Space GLXP team. A number of Lunar Numbat members are also members of the Melbourne-based Connected Community HackerSpace, another more general open source group, which allows Lunar Numbat to build upon experience from hardware and software developed for non-space applications.

Preliminary Landing Site Considerations

The International Atlas for Lunar Exploration by Phil Stooke (also available on our website’s Amazon.com carousel widget) shows the landing sites proposed by the Euromoon 2000 team. These are located at peaks of eternal light near the Moon’s south pole. In the Atlas Stooke also suggests other nearby landing sites with rover routes into the permanently shadowed zones.

We are considering targeting our Google Lunar X PRIZE mission for landing at or near one of those sites since they offer great potential for winning the Water Bonus Prize. Finding a useful deposit of water ice on the Moon would revolutionize space exploration by making a permanently manned lunar base more likely, and we would like to offer our sponsors the chance to be part of such a discovery. Talking about our sponsors, we would also like to offer them exciting video and photography. The Moon’s south pole region is a prime location thanks to its rugged landscape and dramatic shadowing.

There are also interesting scientific benefits of landing in this region including the opportunity of inspecting samples of the South Pole-Aitken impact basin in the ejecta of more recent smaller craters. We intend to reserve a certain amount of mass on our Google Lunar X PRIZE for such customer payloads.

However, landing at a peak of eternal light is quite difficult. Firstly, the polar areas of the moon are typical highland regions which have rough terrain, putting more demands on hazard avoidance and the stability and of the landing craft at touchdown. A mare region would be less demanding in that respect.

An even greater difficulty is the need for a precision landing capability. Missing the landing target at a peak of eternal light by even a few hundred meters could leave the craft in a shadowed area where solar panels cannot generate power, or in a 'communications shadow' where line of sight radio transmissions cannot reach the Earth, leaving relay by a lunar orbiting satellite as the only option for communications.

No robotically guided craft has ever soft-landed on the Moon with the required level of precision to ensure permanent sun illumination at a peak of eternal light, and there are complicated navigation challenges that still need to be solved before that technology becomes available. Remember, there is no satellite navigation system at the Moon with which the lander can determine its position, nor are there any road signs or beacons pointing out the runway!

Considering that landing anywhere on the Moon is already a difficult challenge, we are now focusing our efforts on defining a baseline mission with a landing in a mare region. Mare regions are much flatter than highland ones and this simplifies the landing system design. However, much of the mission architecture and the subsystem designs for a mare landing could also be used for a mission targeting more difficult locations so we will keep open the option to upgrade our Google Lunar X PRIZE mission in the future.

Eventually we will make our landing site selection based upon our assessment of the technical risks, considering also the needs of our potential sponsors and the level of interest in the scientific community for the respective options.

Where Shall I Land my GLXP Mission?

Camelot Crater. Photo Credit: NASA

If you are trying to decide where you should land your Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP) rover on the surface of the Moon, maybe you'd like to keep some of these tips in mind.

The Moon's surface has two main types of terrian - "maria" which are relatively smooth, and "highland plains", which are rougher.

The 21 missions to date by Russia and the USA that successfully landed on the Moon all targetted maria regions except Apollo 17 which targeted a maria/highland boundary area, giving rise to the most dramatic close-up photos of the Moon's surface available, such as the above photo of Camelot Crater (linked from Google Moon).

Craters are the most important features that you need to consdier. They determine the boulders and slopes at your landing site. Craters come in all sizes and large craters can have central peaks, terraces and rims that are particularly troublesome. The areas near the rims of craters have the thickest regolith deposits and the largest boulders. Boulders tend to get smaller the further you are from the crater rim.

Over thousands an millions of years the surfaces of the Moon are gradually smoothed out by the constant bombardment of meteorites so older craters are less troublesome than newer ones. The distribution and age of the craters in your targetted GLXP landing site is something you will need to investigate.

If you are thinking of landing near the south pole to look for water and win the $5 million GLXP Bonus Prize, Beware!.. the surface there is more rugged than the rest of the Moon, consisting of ancient and heavily cratered highland terrian. This poses problems both for the lander and the rover.

To date, no machine has landed on the Moon using an automatic system to avoid hazards. Although, the Apollo missions had one of the finest landing systems ever created - the eyes, brains and hands of top aviators highly trained for that specific purpose. Unfortunatley, it is unlikely that GLXP teams will be able to afford that luxury.

White Label Space is a brandless space technology start-up founded by a team of international space professionals competing in the Google Lunar X PRIZE.

Together with our Partners we are creating the first ever "White Label" space mission - ready for the brand image of powerful sponsors with the vision and courage to create profound and enduring legacies by being part of the first privately funded effort to land on the moon. Every aspect of our GLXP mission, from the naming rights of our space vehicles to the suits worn in our clean rooms, is available for the messages of our sponsors.

Space exploration, and particularly lunar exploration, is on the verge of a new revolution of low cost ambitious missions. This revolution is fuelled by the frustration that humans haven't been to the moon in our lifetimes, and driven by the engine of the internet with all its possibilities for new media, communication and collaboration.

The majority of us work as space engineers, scientists and technologists. We know that the technology needed to go to the Moon is far less demanding than what exists in today's typical handheld electronic devices. The real challenge in the GLXP lies in linking humanity's natural urge to explore space with the financial forces that determine the efforts and energies expended in this world.

Our mission is to provide brandless space missions to anyone that has a viable business plan, taking the principles of Web 2.0 marketing & monetisation to the next level.

MORE About our GLXP Mission >>>

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