Moonshot Cargo Lander — Engineering_▢✕
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Drawing LND-003 · Entry 03 · Jun 2023 – Jun 2024

Moonshot Cargo Lander

Mission Design · Moonshot Project
Complete

A team-led lunar mission simulation under the callsign "Alpha Aces": I directed a 12-person group inside a 200+ member program to research, design, and present a cargo lander for lunar delivery, modeled in Fusion 360. The team's process ran research → design → presentation, with my own research focused on Moon-to-Mars concepts.

Role & team

  • Led a 12-person team operating within a 200+ member simulation, coordinating mission strategy and data analysis.
  • Distributed research across specialists — precision landing, ISRU, payloads, landing sites — and personally researched Moon-to-Mars concepts.
  • Mission frame: a 30–45 day rotation supporting a 2–5 astronaut team across LEO and lunar-surface training.

Research — precision landing

  • Studied Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN), which correlates camera imagery to maps for landing accuracy down to a fraction of a mile.
  • Referenced multi-camera descent imaging (wide-angle descent + narrow-angle regolith) and phased powered-descent → approach → terminal-descent profiles.
  • Paired precision landing with hazard avoidance to mitigate plume–surface interactions.

Research — cargo, payloads & ISRU

  • Sized the lander against real payloads (e.g. VIPER at 5×5×8 ft / ~992 lb, plus MOXIE, LAFORGE, and Moonranger rovers).
  • Evaluated south-polar landing sites (Faustini Rim, Shackleton-adjacent peaks, de Gerlache Rim, Nobile Rim…) for ice access, sunlight, and terrain.
  • Investigated in-situ resource utilization — water-ice extraction and oxygen generation — as the case for local resource use.

Design considerations

  • Framed the cargo lander as a way to test concepts ahead of crewed missions, using secondary landing zones to preserve primary sites for human landers.
  • Called out redundant communications, solar-panel orientation, and lighting-dependent sensor performance as key constraints.

Design & outcome

  • Designed and simulated the cargo lander in Fusion 360 against a 5×5×8 ft cargo-volume constraint, validating structural integrity for payload delivery.
  • The coordinated plan and design resulted in a successful simulated lunar landing.

Specifications

Callsign:Alpha Aces
Team:12 (within a 200+ member sim)
Role:Team Lead · Moon-to-Mars research
Tool:Fusion 360
Cargo volume:5×5×8 ft constraint
Navigation:Terrain Relative Navigation
Outcome:Successful simulated landing
Tools:Fusion 360Structural AnalysisMission Planning

Figures

Cargo lander — Fusion 360 render
Fig. 1 — Cargo lander — Fusion 360 render
Rear view — solar array & high-gain antenna
Fig. 2 — Rear view — solar array & high-gain antenna
Top-down — payload & rover layout
Fig. 3 — Top-down — payload & rover layout
Underside — fuel donut & propellant tanks
Fig. 4 — Underside — fuel donut & propellant tanks
Design breakdown — subsystems & sensors
Fig. 5 — Design breakdown — subsystems & sensors

Attachments

PDR presentation — Alpha Aces “Sisyphus”Open ↗

Preliminary Design Review slide deck (NASA STEM Moonshot).

Research & engineering-process documentOpen ↗

Team brainstorming & engineering-process notes (Google Doc).

Complete · Team Lead, scale ConceptMission Design