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[b]Golden Spike Partners with Draper Laboratory to Conduct Lunar Landing Site Study[/b] [i]Efforts to maximize the extent of the Moon that Golden Spike missions can explore[/i] The Golden Spike Company — the world's first enterprise planning to undertake human lunar expeditions for countries, corporations and individuals — announced today a partnership with Draper Laboratory to examine the range of landing sites that Golden Spike can offer for its commercial human missions to the Moon. Draper provides advanced Guidance, Navigation and Control (GN&C) systems, high-performance, reliable space science instruments, and processing systems for NASA and the U.S. military. Draper provided similar landing site selection studies to NASA's Constellation lunar landing program. The study with Draper is one of a number that Golden Spike is undertaking with industry partners in preparation for future flight system procurements. Market studies already conducted for the company show the possibility of 15 to 25 expeditions in the decade following a first commercial landing. Working with technical staff at Golden Spike, Draper engineers will: [list][*]Evaluate the compatibility of the Golden Spike lander concepts to determine how the constraints of safely landing, lighting, terrain, orbit, delta-V capability, etc. affect the fraction of the lunar front side available as potential landing areas [*]Evaluate potential enhancements to the Golden Spike landers that may further increase the potential area available for landing [*]Define a recommended notional architecture for Golden Spike lunar mission guidance system including functional allocation, algorithms functionality and electronic architecture[/list] The results of the work will be complete by mid-2014. "We're proud to be working with Draper, the gold standard for lunar mission landing site selection, dating from Apollo to the present," said Dr. S. Alan Stern, Golden Spike's President and CEO. "Draper has provided the GNC and flight computers, for all crewed lunar landings. We are excited to bring this expertise to assist Golden Spike in its ambitious objective of opening the lunar frontier," said Draper study lead John West.
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