LunarCubes | The Paving Stones on NASA's Flexible Path

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Due to tight travel budgets and new rules for government sponsored workshops we have chosen to break the first workshop up into three briefings to be held :

LunarCubes Briefing - Palo Alto, CA | Nov 13, 2012
LunarCubes Briefing - Coco Beach, FL | April 11, 2013

LunarCubes Workshop - Palo Alto, CA | Nov 15, 2013

Also, the opportunity for video presentations and remote attendance are an integral part of our planning. So, please consider virtual presentation and attendance.

Each one-day briefing will be self-contained and provide a thorough introduction to CubeSats and the extension required for the deep space environment, while at the same time each briefing will have a specific focus to make them more relevant to the expected audience.

Flexure Engineering is creating the LunarCubes Working Group and LunarCube workshops to promote the creation of a standard to facilitate the development of low cost, rapid development payloads that could be easily added to the many Lunar opportunities that will exist in the coming decades.

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For a CubeSat model to work you need three things:

Plenty of innovative and simple science experiments
Launch opportunities to hitch a ride
A simple, low cost standard and kit solutions

For the Moon we will soon have all three.

In 2009 Chandrayaan-1, LRO, and LCROSS proved that the Moon is a much more dynamic and complex place than anyone expected. These missions created more questions than answers and so there are many scientific problems where one good, simple measurement could dramatically improve our understanding.
With the advent of weak stability boundary transfer orbits from GEO to Lunar orbit, every GEO satellite placement is a potential Lunar mission starting point and there are 25 Google X Prize teams and five national programs to land on the Moon in the next 10-15 years. So, there could be a few GEO opportunities every year and as many as 5 to 10 lander opportunities in the coming decade and they are all looking for science payloads.
The very successful CubeSat standard and kits provide the starting point for the LunarCubes program. The CubeSat standards will need to be modified in three technology areas for Lunar missions :
1. Longer duration missions
2. Higher radiation
3. More extreme thermal environment

Click Here to view, print, or download the flyer for this event

Thus LunarCubes will be more expensive and complex than typical CubeSats but much cheaper than typical interplanetary sats. Since Lunar mission opportunities are more rare and costly than LEO opportunities, it will be common to combine multiple LunarCube-based payloads into one package for launch and operations. This will lead to complications not seen in a typical CubeSat mission and the LunarCube standard will have to address three new areas :

Payload integration - Launch
Multiple LunarCubes on one ride-along opportunity
Payload integration - Operations
Multiple LunarCubes on one lander or Mother Ship
Mission Management
Multiple LunarCubes operating simultaneously

The purpose of the October LunarCubes workshop and the working group will be to create an open discussion about these issues and more to advance Lunar science and mission opportunities for teams around the world.

I hope you can join us.

Russell Cox
Flexure Engineering, CEO

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