ILN
Full Name: International Lunar Network
Phase: Under study
Launch Date: 2013
Program(s): Robotic Lunar Exploration
NASA will undertake landed lunar missions and is architecting a conceptual “global lunar network” as a backbone of its envisioned robotic surface activities. This concept, called the International Lunar Net-work (ILN), aims to provide an organizing theme for all landed science missions in the 2010s by involving each landed station as a node in a geophysical network. Ultimately, this network could be comprised of 8-10 or more nodes. Because some are desired to be located on the lunar far side, NASA will study a lunar communications relay satellite capability as part of its contribution to this potential endeavor.
In the ILN concept, each node would include some number of “core” capabilities (e.g., seismic, heat flow, laser retro-reflectors) that would be extant on each station, reflecting prioritized lunar science goals articulated in the National Research Council’s study, “The Scientific Context for Exploration of the Moon”. Individual nodes could and likely would carry additional, unique experiments to study local or global lunar science. Such experiments might include atmospheric and dust instruments, plasma physics investigations, astronomical instruments, electromagnetic profiling of lunar regolith and crust, local geochemistry, and in situ resource utilization demonstrations.