Mission Summary
By Wendy Lawton, Senior Science Writer, Office of Media Relations, Brown University

Brown University students plan to slam a super-fast spacecraft into the Moon, creating a brilliant flash of light – and shine new light on the forces that shaped this storied satellite.

If their mission, dubbed FLASH, gets off the ground, it will be the first student-designed planetary probe ever to leave Earth’s orbit. And it’s right in step with renewed national, and international, interest in lunar exploration.

FLASH, the First Lunar Appulsion Spacecraft at Hypervelocity, is the brainchild of five Brown engineering students. The mission began in 2005 as a class assignment. But FLASH grabbed the students’ imaginations – and has turned into a full-fledged pursuit. After completing mission plans through independent study, and having them reviewed by space science engineers, students presented FLASH at the 37th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston in March. In April, they presented the mission to NASA scientists at the agency’s Ames Research Center in California.

The student team and their mentors – Rick Fleeter, an adjunct associate professor in Brown’s Division of Engineering and the president and CEO of spacecraft manufacturer AeroAstro, Inc. and Peter Schultz, a Brown professor of geological sciences and director of NASA’s Rhode Island Space Grant Consortium – are currently looking for funding for FLASH.

Students estimate that the mission will cost $7.5 million to execute. If the FLASH team can get a rocket engine donated for their spacecraft, the mission cost would drop to about $4.5 million. Either figure represents a fraction of the cost of a government-run space project, which requires more sophisticated instrumentation. The tiny price tag is part of the point: The student engineers want to pioneer more cost-effective ways of doing important and complex space missions.

Here is how FLASH would work:

Students will build a 940-pound spacecraft nearly 6 feet long and 3 feet wide. Much of FLASH would consist of a solid rocket motor – one powerful enough to propel the device into hypervelocity and get it to the Moon.

Under the mission plan, FLASH would hitch a ride on a rocket that drops communication satellites about 22,000 miles above the Earth. Once in orbit, the spacecraft would circle the Earth for about three to four months while its orbit slowly comes into alignment with the Moon. When the arrangement is right, the main engine would fire.

The engine would get the spacecraft moving at about 32,000 miles per hour – more than 30 times faster than a speeding bullet. By traveling at hypervelocity, FLASH can escape the Earth’s gravitational pull and coast the roughly 240,000 miles to the Moon. Guided by both on-board and ground controls, FLASH would make its crossing to the Moon in just under 11 hours, hitting the central region of Mare Imbrium, a relatively smooth plain next to the site of the 1971 Apollo 15 landing. The site was chosen because the soil composition of the area – mostly basalt – is well understood.

FLASH would strike the lunar surface at a speed of about 22,000 miles per hour, fast enough to create a flash that could be seen from Earth through an amateur telescope or binoculars – and possibly visible to the naked eye. This split-second sparkle will provide the scientific payoff.

Meteoroids routinely hit the Moon’s surface. In December, for example, one meteoroid hit the edge of Mare Imbrium with the force of about 150 pounds of TNT, creating a flash as bright as starlight. Meteoroids also pelt Earth, but the debris burns up when entering the atmosphere – a protective layer that the Moon lacks.

Right now, however, scientists can’t accurately calculate the size of meteoroids that hit the Moon. By slamming a spacecraft with a known size, weight and speed onto an area with a predetermined mineral make-up, FLASH would create baseline data that would allow scientists to calibrate the size of meteoroids that create natural lunar impacts.

This information will be increasingly important as NASA plans to return humans to the Moon. Under President Bush's plans for space exploration, NASA will land astronauts on the Moon for a seven-day stay by 2018, and possibly build a lunar outpost that could be used for longer stays. Meteoroids and the dust they kick up, however, could jeopardize astronauts or their work. Understanding the size and impact of past meteoroid strikes may help space scientists better understand future risks. And this mission might provide another strategy for understanding composition of materials just below the lunar surface through the flash spectrum.

In anticipation of manned exploration on the Moon, NASA will launch the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, in 2008 to gather data on the Moon’s surface – including crashing probes into the poles to hunt for water ice. China and India plan to launch lunar spacecraft within the next two years.

Meanwhile, SMART-1, the European Space Agency’s first lunar spacecraft, will smash into the Moon in early September after identifying key chemicals on the lunar surface. But only FLASH would strike the Moon at a speed high enough to give scientists the baseline they need to understand the impacts of natural meteoroids that hit the Moon.