Ukrainian Mission To The Moon: How To And With What

Ukrainian scientific and technical potential in collaboration with other interested countries allows constructing a spacecraft with the payload for exploration of the Moon. In this paper we consider details of such a mission that includes two parts: 1) orbiter exploration from an elongated orbit with a pericenter over the north pole (100 km above the surface) and the apocenter over the south pole (altitude about 3000 km), and 2) exploration with a lander located on the lunar farside near the south pole in the vicinity of the Braude crater. The lander will contain five dipole antennas for various radio astronomy observations from hundreds of kHz to 40 MIiz. The lander panoramic camera equipped with color and polarization filters will provide useful observations of horizon glow due to the electrostatic levitation effect of the lunar dust. A HiRes camera operating in two spectral bands is suggested for mapping structural and mineralogical characteristics of young surface formations. Working in a squint mode, the 3-mm radar will map the Moon surface in radio brightness, characterizing its roughness, to improve the lunar topographic model.