Technology Roadmap for Future Lunar Human Landing Systems

Lunar human landing system architecture tradespace modeling

“…A lunar human landing system is a transportation system which purpose is to deliver humans (crew) to and from the lunar surface. In our previous paper, we have discussed the three key families of HLS architectures, according to the number of stages being employed [3]. We noted that while 1-stage, 2-stage and 3-stage architectures have been either considered in conceptual studies, or reached prototype stage, the only known HLS architecture tested on the Moon was the one of the Apollo Lunar Module (ALM), which was a 2-stage architecture.…”

“…Architectural decisions such as system reusability need to be evaluated in the context of all other system-level engineering decisions, in order to develop an integrated plan for technology development. In a recent paper, we proposed a technology roadmap for lunar human landing systems, which are key building blocks for future exploration of the Moon [3].…”