## 8. Lunar Missions--Support to Artemis  
As mentioned in Section 1.4, this research not only aimed to solve problems on earth but also support ambitious deep-space missions such as Artemis. As Artemis-I takes a significant leap towards its launch and operations activities, a huge scope for the operations support is needed in the near future. Small satellites play a major role in aligning those operations thoroughly and support astronauts in Artemis-2 mission as well. This paper briefly demonstrated a simple constellation of small satellites communicating with a major ground station base named 'Shackleton' and managing important events at the lunar \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c} \hline \hline
**Parameters** & **Value** \\ \hline Nominal Evaluation Count & 150 \\ Total Evaluation Count & 210 \\ Feasibility Solution & Trailed and found \\ Best Objective & Found—0.96861 \\ Best Coverage Fraction & 1.0000 \\ Best Cost & 0.0314 \\ Best Feasible Solution—State variables & 37.84046 Degrees \\ (Inclination) & \\ Best Feasible Solution—State variables & 6706.73758 km \\ (Semi-major axis) & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2. Best solution for full coverage of small satellite constellation with the ipopt optimizer. Figure 20. Optimized orbital trajectories in a small satellite constellation (defined—area of interest). surface, respectively. Several such missions will take place in the near future to support and test the technologies in lunar environment. This research also aimed at significantly contributing to Artemis as a stepping stone to other major missions in deep space at a later stage. The simulations were planned and executed to communicate these small satellites (four satellites in a walker-like pattern) constellated over a lunar environment with the ground station (Shackleton) having a 10-degree elevation angle with well-defined parameters as portrayed in Figure 21.  
This research directed towards bringing about the major communication and tracking issues that this mission would go through while executing its required functions and operations. Working with an elevation angle of 10 degrees at the south pole of the Moon may raise several concerns with tracking the astronauts and effectively relaying the data. The consideration to Equation (3) in Section 2 is duly given for the design constraint in the lunar constellation case as well. However, as the operating satellites are only four in different planes, if they satisfy the 10-degree elevation angle requirement of the ground station, it is enough to communicate with the Shackleton ground station and in future using the optimization, best solutions for the orbit's cost, coverage, and objective function can be obtained with an added number of satellites if needed for lunar operations. This remains as an important future work to be carried out once the Artemis mission takes the operating position and provides a better understanding of the requirements for ground communication and operations. After the modeling of the given scenario of the  
Figure 21: Two-body orientation of the lunar constellation with Shackleton ground station. lunar constellation and communication set-up, it is crucial to perform analyses on how the parameters interact with and make possible impacts on the overall communication and support operations. Hence, a detailed analysis was carried out and the following results were observed as below:  
The simulations were based on the assumptions of the lunar environment and small satellite mass of about 85 kg and related configuration parameters were set accordingly. The need for these satellites operating in lunar ambience is a pivotal element of the NewSpace era. Figure 11(a) show the variation of apogee height of all the satellites with the elapsed time of master satellite (CAPS1) as one of the important parameters to keep tracking health of these satellites and know their farthest point to the moon at all times.