Welcome to Hevelius web site!

Exactly thirty-five years have passed by since the Moon was conquered by the man. Nowadays that the strategic choices indicate interplanetary missions as a primary objective, the Moon appears as a natural stage, a launching pad towards other celestial bodies in our solar system.

Hevelius project, illustrated in this site, shows a pre-phase A analysis on a multilander mission to the dark side of the Moon, supervised by a relay microsatellite, orbiting on a Halo orbit around L2. Three landers, with miniaturized payloads, are transported by a carrier from a LEO to the surface of the Moon, near which they perform a semi-hard landing, with an airbag system. The transfer exploits the weak stability boundaries of the Earth-Sun-Moon system. Pressing problems for the landers are the landing impact, the thermal survival during the lunar night and the power supply. The data relay satellite, launched as secondary payload on the ASAP platform of Ariane 5, reaches the Halo orbit by exploiting L2 manifolds. It shall support the net-lander on the dark side of the Moon. A limited total weight, the versatility in performing several scientific experiments, the standardization and cost reduction philosophy that leaded the components’ choice and the orbital transfer trajectory optimization make the Hevelius project a valid example of how a modern space mission is developed. The project is totally consistent with the modern trend of investing in small and cost reduced missions with low risks.

The work has been made by an group of university students, supervised by a teacher. We wish this could be a starting point for a deeper study on every single subsystem which could may lead to the mission realization.

Milan, 20^th July 2004

The Hevelius Project Team

Hevelius Web Site

In this web site, you can find a summary of the project.

In "The Mission" section, every subsystem is presented.

In the "Download" section, you can read the final report of the project. It contains every detail of the mission, and we suggest to read it, if you are interested in the mission.