Landing Site Evaluation for the Next Lunar Exploration Project: SELENE-2
Abstract
SELENE-2 is the next Japanese lunar exploration project that is planned to be launched around the middle of 2010's. For the purpose of selecting some landing site candidates which maximize the scientific return from the project, "SELENE-2 Landing Site Research Board" was organized in March, 2010 as one of the sub-teams of the JAXA SELENE-2 pre-project team. The board called for science proposals with landing site candidates from domestic researchers who are interested in lunar science, and the members of the Japanese Society for Planetary Sciences, Japan Association of Mineralogical Sciences, the Geochemical Society of Japan, Seismological Society of Japan, the Geodetic Society of Japan, etc. We have 35 scientific proposals with over 70 landing site candidates submitted from 21 groups. Based on similarity of science scenario, the proposals were combined into 10 landing-site candidates as follows: 1) Tycho, 2) Apollo14, 3) Copernicus, 4) Vertical Holes, 5) Mare Humorum, 6) Ina, 7) Zucchius, 8) Hansteen Alpha, 9) Marius Hills, and 10) Reiner Gamma. We discussed what the best science target of SELENE-2 should be and evaluated the proposals on the basis of the points of view. In our presentation, we will introduce the science scenario at these 10 landing-site candidates with the result of evaluation.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011AGUFM.P43B1681S
- Keywords:
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- 5455 PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLID SURFACE PLANETS / Origin and evolution;
- 6250 PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS / Moon;
- 6297 PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS / Instruments and techniques