The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched a project aimed at European universities with the ambitious goal to create a lunar spacecraft entirely designed, built, and operated by students, and to place it in orbit around the Moon.

The ESMO project (acronym for European Student Moon Orbiter) is a unique and unrepeatable opportunity for many students, who can enrich their experience through an exciting project that will, hopefully, be the basis for future missions planned by ESA. The objectives of the ESMO mission can be summarized as follows:

• to launch the first lunar probe designed and built by teams of students from ESA member nations or from states that cooperate with ESA
• to place and operate the spacecraft in a lunar orbit. It will be used an on-board chemical propulsion system to perform the transfer from the initial orbit around the Earth to a polar orbit around the Moon, through the Lagrangian point L1 of the Sun-Earth system; this operation should take about 3 months, mainly in order to minimize fuel consumption
• to acquire images of the Moon from a stable lunar orbit and transmit them back to the Earth for teaching and research purposes. The satellite will have an on-board narrow angle camera (NAC) weighing 2.5 kg able to produce medium-resolution images of fixed points of the lunar surface. For demonstration and educational purposes only, some high school students will also be able to choose which part of the lunar surface to be photographed
• to perform new measurements relevant to the study and exploration of the Moon. Several payloads will be loaded on the spacecraft, like a small radar capable of performing radar observations of the lunar surface (including the portion of the Moon which is not visible from the Earth), a small and compact radiation monitor, a 2.5 kg passive microwave radiometer, with the task of measuring the thermal properties and dielectric properties of lunar regolith. It will also run a test in the field of telecommunications to experiment the use of an Internet protocol in lunar orbit. LunaNet, the name of this Internet-like protocol, will be in charge to test a new type of communication between vehicles in orbit around the Moon (such as landers and rovers) and ground stations on Earth

ESMO is the fourth mission within ESA's Education Satellite Programme, and it is based on the experience acquired with previous programs such as SSETI Express (launched into LEO orbit in 2005), YES2 (launched in 2007) and ESEO (European Student Earth Orbiter), which is planned to be launched into LEO orbit in 2013. LEO (acronym for Low Earth Orbit) is an orbit with a height between 300 and 1000 km, and with low inclination angle.
The ESMO project, involving over 250 students belonging to 23 universities from 11 different countries, has successfully completed the Phase A (the feasibility study) and therefore the mission is technically feasible. It is also progressing well with the Phase B (preliminary design). The ESMO spacecraft will presumably be launched into GTO orbit (Geostationary Transfer Orbit) by 2014.
SSTL (Surrey Satellite Technology Limited), the System Prime Contractor of ESA's Education Office, is managing the ESMO project, ensuring that students are provided with all necessary support for the design, thus making available to the students themselves specialists in technical and system able to solve any implementative issue, in addition to the necessary infrastructure and facilities.

Italy is also present in the ESMO project, represented by 2 teams of the Politecnico di Milano.
The first team is taking care of the Attitude and orbit determination and control system (AOCS), whose task is to control the spacecraft after the launch, and orientate the solar panels, the camera, antennas, and thrusters. The team must design the architecture of the subsystem, select and size the appropriate hardware, and perform the necessary simulations.
The second team will be in charge of thr Propulsion System Liquid Feed (PSLF), with the task of defining the characteristics of the liquid fuel system. The system will be used to transfer the spacecraft from the GTO orbit to the orbit around the Moon.

This picture shows the ESMO spacecraft as seen from above. The exterior view shows the solar panels and the thermal blankets, whilst the internal view shows only the solar panels (Image of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd).
From the technical point of view, the satellite will have dimensions of 120 x 110 x 100 cm, weighs 265 kg (including 93 kg of fuel) and will have a life of about 11 months.

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