SMART-1: Europe's lunar mission paving the way for new cost effective ground operations
Publication date: 15 July 2005
Authors: Camino, O. et al.
Year: 2005
Presented at the 6th International Symposium "Reducing the Costs of Spacecraft Ground Systems and Operations (RCSGSO)", held 14-17 June 2005 at ESA/ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany. Smart-1 is the first of a series of ESA Small Missions for Advance Research and Technology where elements of the platform and the payload technology have been conceived as a demonstration for future cornerstone missions and an early opportunity for science. It was launched on 27th of September 2003 and spiraled out over a 14-month period until being captured by the Moon on 15/11/2004, thus successfully achieving the primary objective set to demonstrate Solar Electric Propulsion.
The paper will show the pros and contras in some of the choices made for Smart-1 together with the developments and the solutions implemented to mitigate the problems found during the mission:
- Impact of on-board problems on operations
- Ground Segment automation
- Keeping the mission control team reduced
- The increased importance of the Mission Planning System
- Fast distribution of spacecraft data through internet for anomaly identification and analysis
- Summary of lessons learnt