NASA Discovered a Faster, Cheaper Way of Getting to the Moon... and Patented It
upstart writes in with an IRC submission:
NASA Discovered a Faster, Cheaper Way of Getting to The Moon... And Patented It:
The Moon is both seductively close to Earth and cosmically far away: Decades after the end of the space race, it remains extraordinarily expensive and difficult to actually get there.
The journey just got a bit easier, however, thanks to a freshly published NASA invention.
The agency's patent doesn't cover a new piece of equipment or lines of code, but a trajectory - a route designed to save a lunar-bound mission time, fuel, and money, and boost its scientific value.
On June 30, the US Patent and Trademark Office granted and published NASA's patent for a series of orbital manoeuvres, which Business Insider first learned about via a tweet by a lawyer named Jeff Steck.
The technique isn't meant for large spaceships that carry astronauts or rovers, but for smaller, more tightly budgeted missions tasked with doing meaningful science.
[...] By taking time to swing around the Earth, for instance, a spacecraft can steal some of the planet's momentum and slingshot out to the Moon in a series of long orbits that cost it little to no fuel.
Fuel remains necessary to correct orbits and manoeuvre through space, but every ounce a spacecraft carries is mass that an engineer can't dedicate toward other components, including scientific instruments.
[...] [The new trajectory] enlists the help of Earth and the Moon's gravity to speed up and slow down Dapper [Dark Ages Polarimeter Pathfinder] at the right moments, cutting down on the amount of propellant required.
NASA says this new spin on the gravity assist keeps the flight time to about 2 1/2 months, whereas similar options can take six months.
The trajectory also comes with numerous options to slip a spacecraft into an orbit of any angle around the Moon, at practically any time. And it avoids a zone of radiation around Earth called the Van Allen belts, which can damage sensitive electronics.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.