McCandless Lunar Lander: User’s Guide Available

A newly issued Consumer’s Information particulars the McCandless Lunar Lander.

Lockheed Martin’s industrial lunar mission companies is defined within the information describing the lander configuration, payload capabilities and interfaces, touchdown web site choices, testing and services, and mission operations.

Along with customary capabilities described, the lander might be personalized to mission-specific wants.

The McCandless Lunar Lander attracts from Lockheed Martin’s expertise growing, testing, and/or working dozens of planetary spacecraft in collaboration with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Named after astronaut Bruce McCandless

The McCandless Lunar Lander is called in honor of astronaut Bruce McCandless II who handed away in December 2017. He’s well-known for flying the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) jetpack on the planet’s first untethered spacewalk on STS-41B and for serving to deploy the Hubble House Telescope on STS-31.

McCandless joined the astronaut corps throughout the Apollo program in 1966. He supported the Apollo program in Mission Management as a capsule communicator for the historic Apollo 11 launch and moonwalk. After retiring from NASA in 1990, he joined Lockheed Martin, working for greater than 20 years with the aerospace agency.

Cargo transport

From science devices to exploratory rovers to useful resource extraction experiments, the McCandless Lunar Lander can transport as much as 772 kilos (350 kilograms) of cargo to the floor of the Moon and supply as much as 400 Watts of energy to function on the lunar panorama.

The McCandless design, flight and floor software program, and operations idea are tailored from Lockheed Martin’s present technology of NASA planetary spacecraft, such because the InSight Mars lander, OSIRIS-REx asteroid pattern return mission, and upcoming Lucy mission to the Trojan asteroids.

For instance, the avionics, propulsion, and touchdown gear are intently derived from equal methods on InSight.

Moon operations

Lockheed Martin’s Deep House Exploration Mission Operations group will function

McCandless missions from the Mission Help Space (MSA) within the Denver, Colorado facility.

Prospects who will carry out complicated near-real time operations with frequent commanding by way of the lander, akin to working robotic arms or rovers, could contemplate finding an operations heart on the Lockheed Martin facility for max effectivity, the Consumer Information explains.

To entry the McCandless Lunar Lander Consumer’s Information, go to:

https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/mccandless-lunar-lander.html