The European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO) was a proposed European student mission to the Moon. Student teams from 19 universities throughout Europe worked on the program. ESMO was conceived by the Student Space Exploration & Technology Initiative (SSETI) under the support of the European Space Agency (ESA); prior to the start of Phase A the full responsibility for the management of the program was transferred to the ESA Education Office. In 2009, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) was selected as prime contractor. In April 2012, ESMO was scheduled for launch in 2014 or 2015, but further ESA evaluation deemed the ESMO project's costs "unsustainable" given the ESA Education Office's budget. Objectives The mission objectives for ESMO were: To launch the first lunar spacecraft to be designed, built and operated by students across ESA Member States and ESA Cooperating States To place and operate the spacecraft in a lunar orbit To acquire images of the Moon from a stable lunar orbit and transmit them back to Earth for education outreach purposes To perform new measurements relevant to advanced technology demonstration, lunar science and exploration The educational aim of the project was to provide valuable hands-on experience to university students within a real and demanding space project. This is in order to fully prepare a well qualified workforce for ambitious future ESA missions. Lunar transfer The spacecraft of approximately mass and a size of was designed to be launched as a secondary or auxiliary payload into Geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) in 2014/2015. From there, the spacecraft would use its on-board propulsion to travel to lunar orbit via a weak stability boundary transfer. This travel via the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point would take three months, but it requires much less propellant than a direct transfer (see Low energy transfer and Interplanetary Transport Network). ESMO is intended to be operated in lunar orbit for six months. Payloads Payloads that were considered for the orbiter included: Narrow Angle Camera (outreach payload): to take images of the lunar surface. High school students will be able to propose a lunar site to be imaged. LunaNet (technology demonstration payload): internet-like network at the Moon for communication between future spacecraft in lunar orbit, landers, rovers and ground stations on the Earth. The LunaNet experiment will test the associated communication protocols for the Lunar Internet. Radiation Monitor (scientific payload): a compact and low power radiation monitor which can provide inputs