Dr Simon Sheridan

The OU is leading the development of ProSPA, a miniature chemical laboratory for analysing samples for water and ice at the Moon. Together with the ProSEED drill, it makes up PROSPECT, the European Space Agency’s lunar sampling and analysis package. PROSPECT will fly on the Intuitive Machines-4 mission procured by NASA, landing near the south pole of the Moon to survey how water and other molecules are distributed on and under the Moon’s surface. It will help us understand where these materials came from, how they are processed under lunar conditions, and whether they might be harvested as useful resources. The OU is partnered in UK by RAL Space, Airbus Defence and Space, and Dynamic Imaging Analytics; in Germany we work with Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and Technical University of Munich. PROSPECT is led by Leonardo S.p.A. (Italy) under a programme of and funded by ESA.

EMS – the Exospheric Mass Spectrometer – was a spinout of the OU’s ProSPA development programme and flew on NASA’s first attempt to land on the Moon under the Artemis program. As the sensor within the PITMS (Peregrine Ion Trap Mass Spectromer) payload, it aimed to study how a lunar water cycle might be driven by the hot daytime and cold night-time temperatures of the Moon’s surface. And how over millions of years this may contribute to vast stores of water and other molecules at permanently cold polar regions – molecules that could tell us the history of our own planet and might support human exploration of the solar system. The OU, partnered by RAL Space and funded by ESA, developed the Exospheric Mass Spectrometer for PITMS and supported its in-flight scientific operations before the mission ended prematurely after a fault with the spacecraft’s propulsion system. The PITMS instrument was led by Dr Barbara Cohen at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

THIS AMS PROJECT IS A CONTRACT CHANGE NOTICE (CCN) TO AMS PROJECT(688076) ProSPA Phase C/D [E-00070]-01 F5304]. THIS CCN PROVIDES ADDITIONAL INCOME TO OU, TO COVER THE LONGER PROJECT TIMESCALE THAT HAS RESULTED FROM THE CHANGE OF THE SPACECRAFT PROVIDER FROM RUSSIA TO NASA BECAUSE OF EVENTS IN UKRAINE. NO ADDITIONAL OBLIGATIONS ARE PLACED ON OU AS A RESULT OF THIS CCN: 1) It recovers 100% of the additional OU staff costs required 2) It recovers 100% of the additional OU non-staff costs required 3) It recovers 100% of the additional External Partner costs.

ESA project to develop MEMS Gas Chromatography components for space flight instrumentation. This is a follow on project for the MEMS GC-MS, AMS project 658840

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Following on from the CAMS Replacement Feasibilty Study, the OU has been invited to propose a 17 month project to build a Prototype replacement system. The Distributed Air Monitoring System (DAMS) Prototype will be made available for a BAe submarine trial in August 2010. Final Reports and submarine Trial reports are due to be available before November 2010. A MOD decision will be made after November 2010 as to whether the DAMS system will be adopted as a replacement for CAMS.

Of particular interest to the PSSRI are missions that offer the opportunity to gain access to surface and sub-surface material through the deployment of mass spectrometers from either high-speed penetrator platforms or from sub-surface penetrating mole devices deployed by soft landers. We plan to develop and evaluate a non-destructive ion detection system for an Ion trap mass spectrometer which can be deployed by either a penetrator or a mole deployment device. A mass spectrum can be extracted from an image current measured at a number of pick-up plates by performing a Fourier Transform (FT) on the measured image current. Thus, FT detection offers the unique ability to detect all of the trapped ions simultaneously and with sufficiently high sampling rates extremely high resolution measurements are possible. In addition, the non-destructive nature of FT detection offers the ability to measure a trapped ion population many times, thus increasing detector integration durations, resulting in very high instrument sensitivity. It is anticipated that such an instrument will have analytical (mass resolution, sensitivity) and systematic (i.e. mass and power) advantages over current technology Targeted initially at space flight applications, the study will also consider its applicability to laboratory-based isotope geochemistry.

Lunar Volatiles

STFC/RCUK Innovation Fellowship

‘Penetrators’ are a new kind of spacecraft that land at high speed (think bullet from a gun!) into a planetary body such as the Moon, Mars or Europa, burying themselves a few meters into the ground in the process. Because they land at high speed, they don’t need much fuel to slow themselves down before hitting the surface – which means that the missions can be lightweight – which also means inexpensive. And here’s the clever bit: they contain a suite of sensors that operate during and after the landing, taking a host of scientific measurements such as the structure of the material into which they have landed, its temperature and chemical composition – even photos of the landing site. Many scientists – us included – think the best place to land the first penetrator mission would be near the south pole of the Moon. This has never been visited before, because it is very cold and there is very little sunlight to power the solar cells needed to keep a traditional Moon lander or rover alive. In fact, some places are so cold that we believe that valuable materials such as water ice may have collected there over billions of years in a gigantic deep freeze, holding clues about how the Moon formed and evolved. Not only is this of tremendous scientific value, it also changes the way we think about exploring the Moon and even our solar system. If we can find this water it opens up the possibility of using it to supply astronauts in future Moon bases with drinking water. And then we can split it into hydrogen and oxygen to fuel a new fleet of spacecraft that could take advantage of the Moon’s low gravity to launch new missions to Mars and beyond. This study is a vital step in designing a penetrator mission. We want to study how the radio signal that it transmits after landing, is affected by the soil it is buried beneath. If we find that the signal passes easily through the soil, we can design the penetrator to go deeper so it can achieve more science. If the signal doesn’t pass easily, then we will design a shallower penetrator. The ideal experiment would test a radio signal passing through real lunar soil. But to do this would require a lot of soil – much more than we could obtain of the precious samples brought back to Earth by NASA’s Apollo missions. And there’s another problem – all the samples on Earth are from near the Moon’s equator, meaning it is very different to what we would expect to find near the pole. So our first step will be to identify a suitable lunar soil ‘analogue’ – an Earth rock that has been crushed to mimic the essential properties of the Moon’s polar soil. Then we will mix it with varying proportions of water ice, and cool it to a range of sub-zero temperatures, to mimic the conditions at the lunar poles. And finally we can obtain a suite of measurements of the electrical properties of the soil, which we can feed into a computer model to predict how our penetrator antenna will perform when buried on the Moon. This research will be performed by The Open University partnered by QinetiQ Limited, and you can follow our progress at www.spacelabslive.com

Recent discussions with the Satellite Propulsion Group at SSTL Ltd have resulted in them rating the development, qualification and implemention of the OU's patented proportional valve as being their strategic R&D priority for 2015. Simon Sheridan is the lead inventor the patent (The Valve) along with Martin Jarvis and Geraint Morgan. Oli Lane from SSTL will lead a bid to Innovate UK that will use the OU as their academic project partners to translate the exisiting know-how to SSTL. A second commercial company (tank manufacturer) may also form part of the application (tbc). A commercial Licensing Deal between the OU and SSTL will be a pre-requisite for the work to go ahead. Meetings are scheduled with Malcolm Stokes and iain Gilmour to further this agenda. With SSTL being a subsidiary of Airbus - derivatives of the OU valves have the potential to be utlised as part of the propulsion systems on future small and large (including geostationary) satellites. SSTL would provide the route to market and would conduct the necessary space qualification. Budget available to the OU is likely to be 80% of £80k (tbc)