MoonLITE

The Moon Lightweight Interior and Telecoms Experiment (MoonLITE), is a proposed British space mission to explore the Moon and develop techniques for future space exploration. If funded, it will be built by a consortium of UK industry likely including Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, and it is planned to be launched into lunar orbit in 2014. The mission concept emerged from a study run by the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (now the Science and Technology Facilities Council) in 2006. In December 2008, the British National Space Centre (part of the UK Space Agency since April 2010) announced that the project was moving to Phase A study. This is a 12-month study of the mission system, the penetrators and the penetrator descent systems.