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Generation of Simulated Tracking Data for LADEE Operational Readiness Testing

Operational Readiness Tests were an important part of the pre-launch preparation for the LADEE mission. The generation of simulated tracking data to stress the Flight Dynamics System and the Flight Dynamics Team was important for satisfying the testing goal of demonstrating that the software and the team were ready to fly the operational mission. The simulated tracking was generated in a manner to incorporate the effects of errors in the baseline dynamical model, errors in maneuver execution and phenomenology associated with various tracking system based components. The ability of the mission team to overcome these challenges in a realistic flight dynamics scenario indicated that the team and flight dynamics system were ready to fly the LADEE mission. Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment.

Tracking

The Use of Standards on the LADEE Mission

The Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) was a small explorer class mission that launched Sept 7, 2013 and successfully de-orbited and impacted the moon's surface on April 17, 2014. The spacecraft was the first to launch from a Minotaur 5 and was the first deep space mission to launch from the Wallops flight facility. Figure 1 shows the famous image of a frog unlucky enough to be launched from the facility at the same time as LADEE. The science mission for the spacecraft was to determine the density, composition and variability of the lunar exosphere. In addition, it performed a first-of-a-kind demonstration of laser-based communications from deep space that exhibited a record downlink rate of 622 megabits per second from the moon. In order to perform the lunar dust surveys, the spacecraft was placed in a retrograde equatorial orbit with periapsis between 20 and 60 kilometers. The mission was granted an extension in which final science surveys were performed at altitudes as low as 2 kilometers over the moon's surface. The cadence for spacecraft operations was demanding: the moon's highly inhomogeneous gravity field distorted the orbit, the regular maneuvers were subject to strict payload-induced pointing requirements, and there were periodic attitude changes to keep the spacecraft thermally safe. This led to a need for high reliability in the operation of the spacecraft while obeying strict budget and schedule guidelines.

Standards

Constraining the Ratio of Micrometeoroids from Short- and Long-Period Comets at 1 AU from LADEE Observations of the Lunar Dust Cloud

We interpret recent observations of the secondary dust ejecta cloud around the Moon from the Lunar Dust Experiment (LDEX) on board the NASA Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft with help from dynamical models of meteoroids. Results suggest that in order to match the spatial structure of observed ejecta profiles, the flux of meteoroids on the Moon must be primarily provided by short-period comets with an excess ratio of at least 1.3:1 compared to long-period comets. This ratio increases significantly if the dependence of the ejecta yield on impactor velocity is stronger than generally believed. The model accounts for the orbital geometry of LADEE and shows no indication of a large asymmetry in the meteoroid flux impacting from the Helion and Anti-Helion directions.

Janches, Diego

LADEE Preparations for Contingency Operations for the Lunar Orbit Insertion Maneuver

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft was launched on September 7, 2013 UTC, and completed its mission on April 17, 2014 UTC with a directed impact to the Lunar Surface. Its primary goals were to examine the lunar atmosphere, measure lunar dust, and to demonstrate high rate laser communications. The mission objectives, much of which can be attributed to careful LADEE mission was a resounding success, achieving all planning and preparation. This paper discusses the specific preparations for fault conditions that could occur during a highly-critical phase of the mission, the Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI). highly critical phase of the mission.

failure analysis

Contingency Trajectory Design for a Lunar Orbit Insertion Maneuver Failure by the LADEE Spacecraft

A contingency trajectory analysis was performed for NASA Ames Research Center’s (ARC’s) Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft in case of a missed lunar orbit insertion (LOI) maneuver. Recovery trajectory options are shown to exist for all LADEE launch opportunities throughout a one year period. Recovery ΔV costs primarily depended on the spacecraft’s apogee location on or near the Sun-Earth weak stability boundary (WSB) and the time needed by the spacecraft to recover (e.g. to “wake up” from “safe” mode) to perform an escape prevention maneuver after the missed LOI.

Genova, A. L.

LADEE Search for a Dust Exosphere: A Historical Perspective

The LADEE search for exospheric dust is strongly motivated by putative detections of forward-scattered sunlight from exospheric dust grains which were observed during the Apollo era. This dust population, if it exists, has been associated with charging and transport of dust near the terminators. It is likely that the concentration of these dust grains is governed by a saltation mechanism originated by micrometeoroid impacts, which are the source of the more tenuous ejecta cloud.

DUST EXOSPHERE

A Flight Rule Checker for the LADEE Lunar Spacecraft

As part of the design of a space mission, an important part is the design of so-called flight rules. Flight rules express constraints on various parts and processes of the mission, that if followed, will reduce the risk of failure. One such set of flight rules constrain the format of command sequences regularly (e.g. daily) sent to the spacecraft to con-trol its next near term behavior. We present a high-level view of the automated flight rule checker FRC for checking command sequences sent to NASA’s LADEE Lunar mission spacecraft, used throughout its entire mission. A command sequence is in this case essentially a program (a sequence of commands) with no loops or conditionals, and it can there-fore be verified with a trace analysis tool. FRC is implemented using the TraceContract runtime verification tool, an internal Scala DSL for checking event sequences against “formal specifications”. The paper illustrates this untraditional use of runtime verification in a real con-text, with strong demands on the expressiveness and flexibility of the specification language, illustrating the advantages of an internal DSL.

LADEE

Transient Plume Model Testing Using LADEE Spacecraft Attitude Control System Operations

We have learned it is conceivable that the Neutral Mass Spectrometer on board the Lunarr Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) could measure gases from surface-reflected Attitude Control System (ACS) thruster plume. At minimum altitude, the measurement would be maximized, and gravitational influence minimized ("short" time-of-flight (TOF) situation) Could use to verify aspects of thruster plume modeling Model the transient disturbance to NMS measurements due to ACS gases reflected from lunar surface Observe evolution of various model characteristics as measured by NMS Species magnitudes, TOF measurements, angular distribution, species separation effects

Woronowicz, Michael

Validation and Verification of LADEE Models and Software

The Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission will orbit the moon in order to measure the density, composition and time variability of the lunar dust environment. The ground-side and onboard flight software for the mission is being developed using a Model-Based Software methodology. In this technique, models of the spacecraft and flight software are developed in a graphical dynamics modeling package. Flight Software requirements are prototyped and refined using the simulated models. After the model is shown to work as desired in this simulation framework, C-code software is automatically generated from the models. The generated software is then tested in real time Processor-in-the-Loop and Hardware-in-the-Loop test beds. Travelling Road Show test beds were used for early integration tests with payloads and other subsystems. Traditional techniques for verifying computational sciences models are used to characterize the spacecraft simulation. A lightweight set of formal methods analysis, static analysis, formal inspection and code coverage analyses are utilized to further reduce defects in the onboard flight software artifacts. These techniques are applied early and often in the development process, iteratively increasing the capabilities of the software and the fidelity of the vehicle models and test beds.

Gundy-Burlet, Karen

MBSE Validation and Verification: Case Study for LADEE

The Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission orbited the moon in order to measure the density, composition, and time variability of the lunar dust environment. The successful mission launched September 7, 2013 and was de-orbited and impacted the moon's surface on April 17, 2014. The ground-side and onboard flight software for the mission was developed using a “Model-Based Software Engineering” (MBSE) methodology combined with strong reuse of Government and Commercial Off-The Shelf (G/COTS) components. Models of the spacecraft and flight software were developed in a graphical dynamics modeling package. Flight Software requirements were prototyped and refined using the simulated models. After the model was shown to work as desired in the simulation framework, C-code software was automatically generated from the models. The auto-generated software was then tested in real-time Processor-in-the-Loop and Hardware-in-the-Loop test beds. “Traveling Road Show” test beds were used for early integration tests with payloads and other subsystems. Traditional techniques for verifying computational sciences models were used to characterize the spacecraft simulation. A lightweight set of formal methods analysis, static analysis, formal inspection, and code coverage analyses were utilized to further reduce defects in the onboard flight software artifacts. These techniques were applied early and often in the development process, iteratively increasing the capabilities of software and fidelity of vehicle models and test beds.

Model-Based Software Engineering, Validation and V

A Flight Rule Checker for the LADEE Lunar Spacecraft

As part of the design of a space mission, an important part is the design of so-called flight rules. Flight rules express constraints on various parts and processes of the mission, that if followed, will reduce the risk of failure. One such set of flight rules constrain the format of command sequences regularly (e.g. daily) sent to the spacecraft to con- trol its next near term behavior. We present a high-level view of the automated flight rule checker Frc for checking command sequences sent to NASA’s LADEE Lunar mission spacecraft, used throughout its entire mission. A command sequence is in this case essentially a program (a sequence of commands) with no loops or conditionals, and it can there- fore be verified with a trace analysis tool. Frc is implemented using the TraceContract runtime verification tool, an internal Scala DSL for checking event sequences against “formal specifications”. The paper illustrates this untraditional use of runtime verification in a real con- text, with strong demands on the expressiveness and flexibility of the specification language, illustrating the advantages of an internal DSL.

Kurklu, Elif

High-Resolution, Ground-Based Observations of the Lunar Sodium Exosphere During the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) Mission

We present the first comprehensive set of lunar exospheric line width and line width derived effective temperatures as a function of lunar phase (66° waxing phase to 79° waning phase). Data were collected between November 2013 and May 2014 during six observing runs at the National Solar Observatory McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope by applying high-resolution Fabry-Perot spectroscopy (R ~ 180,000) to observe emission from exospheric sodium (5,889.9509 Å, D2 line). The 3-arc min field of view of the instrument, corresponding to ~336 km at the mean lunar distance (384,400 km), was positioned at several locations off the lunar limb; only equatorial observations taken out to 950 km are presented here. We find the sodium effective temperature distribution to be approximately a symmetric function of lunar phase with respect to full Moon. Within magnetotail passage we find temperatures in the range of 2500-9000 K. For phase angles greater than 40deg we find that temperatures flatten out to ~1700 K.

Subsolar