The BOLAS: Break-off Landing and Sensing system soft-lands a science payload without air resistance or reverse propulsion, by using rotational velocity to cancel out translational velocity. BOLAS is designed to deliver a penetrometer and a spectrometer into rover-inaccessible permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) on the Moon and communicate the results in the S band to satellites.

  1. A CLPS lander or manned vehicle deploys the BOLAS and its launcher near the edge of a PSR.
  2. Pneumatic launchers launch the BOLAS, or connected spheres, imparting the required initial velocity and angular velocity
  3. Each sphere follows a cycloidal trajectory with fluctuating total velocity.
  4. The system detects an optimal detachment point in the trajectory, such that
  5. the non-sacrificial sphere detaches with zero velocity at the desired height above ground, while the sacrificial sphere crashes at high velocity.

Watch our proposal video here: