A record published by the US Patent and Trademark Office recently called attention even though it did not reveal equipment or technology. It is a new trajectory for the Moon, developed by NASA engineers. The unprecedented route for travel to the natural satellite saves money, time and fuel, as well as providing unprecedented discoveries about the Universe for the first mission to explore it.
Through this technique, smaller spacecraft can hitch a ride on missions launched to Geosynchronous Earth Orbit, a region that is the destination of many satellites. There, they would be able to perform a series of maneuvers at any time of the year and without restrictions on time and inclination to enter lunar orbit, making a faster trip and with little or no fuel.
Due to its characteristics, it is aimed at spaceships of reduced size and low budget, so larger missions, with spacecraft carrying astronauts and rovers, cannot benefit from this route.
DAPPER Mission
One of the first missions to use the new path to the Moon will be the Dark Ages Polarimeter Pathfinder (DAPPER), a project created by astrophysicists at the University of Colorado (USA). The same size as a microwave, the spacecraft is compact enough to travel as a secondary payload in a larger spacecraft to geosynchronous orbit and from there begin its journey to the Moon using only “a modest fuel tank” for adjustments. steering.
Still with no scheduled launch date, DAPPER will pick up low-frequency radio signals from the dark side of the Moon, from 13 billion years ago, avoiding interference caused by Earth’s electronic devices. By escaping these blockages, the equipment can find evidence of the first stars, black holes and galaxies formed about 500 million years after the Big Bang.
Source: Tecmundo
