Lunar Natural Environment for use by the Constellation Program

Abstract

The Lunar Environments used by the Constellation Program are embodied in two documents, the NEDD (Natural Environments Definition for Design) and the DSNE (Design Specification for Natural Environments). Recently, the lunar environments for the NEDD have been defined and incorporated in the document, as the result of contributions from experts in all areas of lunar environments. The purpose of the NEDD is to provide a uniform description of the natural environment to serve as a basic framework for both the crewed and robotic missions of the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD). It is intended to support engineering and analysis, requirements development, and verification involved in the development of exploration concepts and architectures, flight hardware, and new technologies. (It does not support the operational phases of the Program since models and data with different properties are needed for those applications.) By presenting a single benchmark definition of natural environment parameters it provides an easily accessible and uniform baseline for competitive studies, independent analyses, and concept studies.