Passive thermal control design and flight operation results of nano moon lander OMOTENASHI

• Published in: Acta astronautica Vol. 222; pp. 481 - 492
• Main Authors: Kikuchi, Junji, Toshihiro, Osada, Hirasawa, Ryo, Tokunaga, Kakeru, Morishita, Naoki, Miyoshi, Kota, Torii, Wataru, Bando, Nobutaka, Hirose, Chikako, Kinjo, Tomihiro, Akizuki, Yuki, Hashimoto, Tatsuaki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01-09-2024
• Subjects: CubeSat; Moon lander; OMOTENASHI; Secondary payload; SLS; OMOTENASHI; Secondary payload; SLS; Moon lander; CubeSat
• ISSN: 0094-5765; 1879-2030
• DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2024.06.034

OMOTENASHI is a 6U CubeSat launched by the first NASA SLS rocket. Its mission was to demonstrate that a CubeSat can make a semi-hard landing on the Moon. Tight resource constraints make it difficult to mount a heater and a radiator in a CubeSat, so passive thermal control is a prominent design feature of OMOTENASHI that resolves the technical difficulty. In November 2019, a thermal vacuum test was conducted. This paper discusses the thermal design and the test results. OMOTENASHI was launched by SLS rocket on November 16, 2022. After the SLS rocket separation, OMOTENASHI's attitude control malfunctioned so it could not generate power from its solar cells. Eventually, communications were lost and have not been restored. Brief telemetry data confirmed that the temperature monitor functioned correctly for 30 min. This paper reports the flight results of the thermal status during the first ground station pass. Also, a comparison between the analysis model and telemetry data is shown. Finally, based on its estimated trajectory, the future thermal profile of the spacecraft and the result of the search operation are discussed.
•OMOTENASHI was developed as the world's smallest moon lander that was launched by a NASA SLS rocket.•Passive thermal control design without a thermal controller is adopted by using a white paint and a graphite sheet.•Passive thermal control design can be utilized for future CubeSat missions under tight resource constraints.•This paper introduced the experiment and analysis method that achieves the thermal design for lunar missions by CubeSat.•The flight data after the launch of the SLS rocket showed the feasibility of this passive thermal control design.