Mission Overview
Project Overview
Initially championed by the NASA Office of Education, the American Student Moon Orbiter (ASMO) project offers to next generation explorers unique opportunities for integral involvement in the U.S. space exploration program. The ASMO project will be carried out as a diverse nationwide higher education initiative by which American university students and their faculty advisors will design, build, register, launch and own the ASMO small spacecraft and its payload.
The student-built ASMO craft could be launched to orbit the Earth’s Moon in 2011 in tandem with a spacecraft to be developed by European students under a companion European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO) program. Through coordination with ESA’s ESMO program and possible spacecraft interoperability, valuable opportunities for international scientific and technical collaboration could be offered. Conceived to accommodate a 10kg payload in a highly elliptical 2 year lunar orbit, there are numerous options for ASMO to serve as a valuable data gathering mission and technology demonstration that will enhance understanding of the lunar environment and advance the small satellite field. Representing a new class of exploration activity whereby the public can directly participate in a NASA mission, the ASMO project is also intended to lower the barrier of entry into space exploration.
ASMO Introduction
The NASA Office of Education has provided start-up support for the American Student Moon Orbiter (ASMO) project and designated the lead agency role to the Strategic Communications and Development Directorate at the NASA Ames Research Center with engineering support by the John H. Glenn Research Center. ASMO constitutes a new form of a NASA-supported participatory education project whereby NASA performs Pre-Phase A start-up functions then, in 2008, hands the leadership reins to a selected university-based management team to develop and manage the distributed engineering and design process, to be conducted by university students and their faculty advisors. In Phase A through the Phase E wrap-up in 2013, NASA will provide consistent yet arms-length project and engineering oversight and designated support functions including two workshops per year and facilitating design reviews.
That the university participants, and not NASA, will design, build and own the ASMO spacecraft and its payloads constitutes a fundamental premise of this project. Obtaining the necessary funding and in-kind donations to carry out the ASMO mission will be the responsibility of the university teams.
As a participatory exploration program, ASMO will satisfy both space science objectives and national education goals. Currently, NASA does not directly sponsor a program to help university students design, build and launch spacecraft. Intended to meet this need, ASMO shares in common with precedent participatory university space education programs the primary goal of educating and training the future technical aerospace workforce by supporting students in direct, hands-on involvement in small spacecraft and satellite design, build, launch and operation as well as payload research opportunities.
Precedent U.S. programs include the CubeSat university program, initiated as a completely independent venture without benefit of government support, and the University Nanosat Program sponsored by the US Air Force the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
The European Space Agency (ESA) sponsors two satellite programs in their ESA Education Projects division within their Education Department: the Student Space Exploration and Technology Initiative (SSETI) and the Young Engineers’ Satellite (YES). ESMO is slated as the third mission to be designed, built and operated by European students through the SSETI association, and may serve as a companion mission to ASMO, as discussed in detail later in this publication.
