Soft Lunar Landing Guidance Sensor

Abstract

In the near future United States space vehicles, such as the Centaur, will be soft landing 300 to 730 lb payloads on the moon. By the early 1970’s, the Nova vehicle will be landing payloads of 20,000 lb — enough payload to permit a man to go to the moon and come back. The lack of an appreciable atmosphere on the moon rules out the possibility that these space vehicles could make soft landings based on the use of aerodynamical devices (parachutes, lifting surfaces). In lieu of this, these space vehicles will carry astronautical reaction-type devices (retrorockets, etc.) to be used to effect the soft landing. As a corollary, the moon vehicles will carry a lunar landing sensor capable of providing the necessary intelligence for control of this energy. An initial design of such a soft lunar landing guidance sensor is the subject of this paper [1].