Sizing and Design Tool for Tall Lunar Tower
Kyongchan Song, Martin M. Mikulas, Matthew Mahlin, Jacob T. Cassady
Abstract
View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2023-0382.vid Tall lunar towers enable direct collection of solar energy using solar panels that can generate power exceeding 50 kW. Tall lunar towers also support solar reflectors and concentrators for solar farms, which enable various mission architectures on the lunar surface. The Tall Lunar Tower project at NASA Langley Research Center is focused on the design, modeling, fabrication, and testing of an assembled tall lunar tower engineering development unit. Presented in this paper is the development of a sizing and design tool for the tall lunar tower. The predicted frequency and buckling responses of the tall lunar tower from the tool are compared with the results obtained from finite element analysis.