ITA will build spacecraft for lunar mission with NASA – 07/23/2023 – Sidereal Messenger

Brazil will soon have an unmanned lunar mission to call its own, to be carried out in partnership with NASA. The project, called SelenITA, was presented on Friday (21) by Luis Loures, an engineer at the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica and coordinator of the initiative in the country, during the national edition of the online event International Moon Day.

The probe, which was born in Brazil and ended up being absorbed by the American space agency, will consist of a satellite and a package of instruments to be placed on the lunar surface by a commercial transport mission contracted by NASA.

The name plays with the words Selene, Greek goddess of the Moon, and ITA, the originator of the project. The satellite itself will be built by the institute in São José dos Campos (SP) – the second to be built in partnership with NASA, after Sport, launched into low Earth orbit from the International Space Station last year – and should have seven instruments, two provided by the University of Iowa, one by the University of Michigan and two by ITA, in addition to one by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and a camera.

The spacecraft fits into the category of low-cost missions and consists of a cubesat (small satellite assembled with systems that can be bought “off the shelf”) with a 12U format, that is, 12 volumes of 10 cm x 10 cm. The project has the support of AEB (Brazilian Space Agency) and Finep (Financier of Studies and Projects).

The main objectives of the mission will be to study the local magnetic fields that exist in some regions of the lunar crust and their interaction with the solar wind, in addition to studying the transport of dust across the surface of the natural satellite, caused by electrical phenomena and impacts of asteroids and meteoroids, and the radiation environment on the surface.

All themes are important in the context of the Artemis program, which NASA is leading to promote a manned return to the Moon during this decade. The first orbital lunar flight by astronauts in this new initiative should take place at the end of 2024 – 52 years after the last human visit to the natural satellite, with Apollo 17, in 1972.

With SelenITA, Brazil already has two lunar missions under development. The oldest is Garatéa-L, a private mission in partnership with public research institutions that consists of a 6U cubesat and focuses on astrobiology, with the study of bacterial cultures exposed to the radiation environment of cislunar space, that is, close to the Moon. According to Rodrigo Leonardi, from the AEB Satellites and Applications Coordination, the two are currently undergoing a qualification process at the Brazilian agency.

In 2021, Brazil joined the Artemis Accords, a treaty presented by the US that aims to discipline general issues in the peaceful exploration of the Moon, opening the doors to cooperation in lunar exploration. NASA has every interest in attracting the country to deepen its participation in the project and this Monday (24th) the agency’s administrator, Bill Nelson, will be in Brasília, where he will meet with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The next day, he will go to São José dos Campos, where he has an agenda at Inpe (National Institute for Space Research).

This column is published on Mondays in the printed version, in Folha Corrida.

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