Development of the SUBLIME seismometer for future Lunar missions

Constraining the details of the Moon’s internal structure and seismic activity is required to understand its origin, history, and evolution. Further, characterization of moonquake magnitude and distribution is an essential element of providing safety to human-driven exploration of the Lunar surface. These observations and constraints are primarily enabled via monitoring of seismic and bolide activity on the Moon. Data from seismometers therefore provide a critical approach to enable a detailed mapping of the interior of the Moon from regolith to core, to constrain physics of internal lunar dynamics, and to catalog and characterize moonquakes and bolide impacts. The key technological challenge is to produce a modern, high-performance seismometer that can provide the range of seismic data necessary to achieve the aforementioned objectives. Here we propose to mature a pathfinder planetary seismometer, the SUBsurface Lunar Investigation and Monitoring Experiment (SUBLIME) instrument. This seismometer is based on an innovative Molecular Electronic Transducers (MET) technological design, which is rugged, simple to deploy, allowing flexible incorporation on a broad range of future commercial lander missions and long term monitoring stations. We propose to further develop our instrument concept to retire technical risks associated with the instrument design. Specifically, our team has identified the following risks: Risk-1) maturing the seismic package and control electronics to ensure they can operate in the Lunar environment, Risk-2) minimizing resources to accommodate SUBLIME within a reasonable mass, volume, power and data volume, and Risk-3) document the requirements associated with the deployment of SUBLIME to ensure it is well coupled to the surface for science operations. To address these risks our team will (1) fabricate a high fidelity engineering model to demonstrate operation in the relevant environment and provide precise constraints on mass, volume and power requirements (addresses Risk and Risk-2) and (2) conduct field tests in an appropriate Lunar analog to define deployment requirements (addresses Risk-3).

This proposal is relevant to the DALI program in that the work proposed here will aid the SUBLIME concept in reaching TRL 6 in the 2021/2022 timeframe. Moreover, this proposal will develop subsystems of the SUBLIME instrument in order to verify performance of the complete system and will mitigate risks associated with its development and accommodation on future Lunar missions.

The ASU/GSFC/UMD partnership has successfully worked to develop the seismic sensor technology under a NASA COLDTech award and has tested key components of the sensor subsystem in relevant environments. This partnership has a proven record of achievement and is well suited to continue development of the SUBLIME instrument. More »