The challenges of designing a lightweight spacecraft structure for landing on the lunar surface

Cole, Timothy J.; Bassler, Julie A.; Cooper, Scott; Stephens, V. M.; Briere, Marc A.; Betenbaugh, Theresa

doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2011.08.003

Cited by 11 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…NASA Robotic Mining Competition (RMC) was stated due to recent NASA missions to Mars' discoveries, robots such as "Curiosity" and orbiting satellites taking pictures and videos showed a large amount of water in form of water ice and hydrated minerals on Mars [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. Water sources formed millions of years ago were determined to be a result of clay and clay-like minerals on the surface or underground of Mars and Moon.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Space Mining Robot Prototype for NASA Robotic Mining Competition Utilizing Systems Engineering Principles

Tashtoush¹,

Vazquez²,

Herrera³

et al. 2021

IJACSA

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The 2017 National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) Robotic Mining Competition (RMC) is an outstanding opportunity for engineering students to implement all the knowledge and experience that they gained in the undergraduate years, in building a robot that will provide an intellectual insight to NASA, to develop innovative robotic excavation concepts. For this competition, multiple universities from all over the U.S. will create teams of students and faculty members to design and build a mining robot that can traverse, mine, excavate at least 10 kg of regolith, then deposit it in a bin in the challenging simulated Martian terrain. Our team's goal is to improve on our current design and overcome DustyTRON 2.0's limitations by analyzing them and implementing new engineering solutions. The process to improve this system will enable our team members to learn mechanical, electrical, and software engineering. DustyTRON 3.0 is divided into three subteams, namely, Mechanical, Circuitry, Software sub-teams. The mechanical team focused on solving the mechanical structure, robot mobility, stability, and weight distribution. The circuitry team focused on the electrical components such as batteries, wiring, and motors. The Software team focused on programming the NVidia TK1, Arduino controller, and camera integration. This paper will outline the detailed work following systems engineering principles to complete this project, from research, to design process and robot building compete at the Kennedy Space Center. Only 54 teams were invited to participate from all over the US and DustyTRON team represented the state of Texas and placed the 29th and awarded the "Innovative Design" award.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Space Mining Robot Prototype for NASA Robotic Mining Competition Utilizing Systems Engineering Principles

Tashtoush¹,

Vazquez²,

Herrera³

et al. 2021

IJACSA

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show abstract

“…Furthermore, if the spacecraft structures are high load-bearing while lightweight means high efficient. The lightweight requirement originates from the desire to minimize the launch costs and possibly maximum the payload on a single launch vehicle [8]. The utilize of lightweight composite materials, advanced manufacturing techniques and lightweight based design can minimize mass and maximize structural stiffness.…”

Section: High Load-bearing While Lightweightmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tensegrity Structures Apply to Spacecraft Structures: The State of the Art and Future Perspectives

Tao¹,

Liu²,

Zhang³

2019

Proceedings of the 5th World Congress on Mechanical, Chemical, and Material Engineering

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“…In aerospace engineering, the goals of reducing the launch costs and allowing multiple landers to be packaged on a single launch vehicle become urgent [1], therefore, the demand for lightweight structure is rising rapidly. In the design process of spacecraft, the traditional elastic limit rule and its affiliated relax factors are frequently used.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Shakedown Strength Based Parametric Optimization Technique and Its Application on an Airtight Module

Huang

Zhang

et al. 2022

Chin. J. Mech. Eng.

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In aerospace engineering, design and optimization of mechanical structures are usually performed with respect to elastic limit. Besides causing insufficient use of the material, such design concept fails to meet the ever growing needs of the light weight design. To remedy this problem, in the present study, a shakedown theory based numerical approach for performing parametric optimization is presented. Within this approach, strength of the structure is measured by its shakedown limit calculated from the direct method. The numerical method developed for the structural optimization consists of nested loops: the inner loop adopts the interior point method to solve shakedown problems pertained to fixed design parameters, while the outer loop employs the genetic algorithm to find optimal design parameters leading to the greatest shakedown limit. The method established is first verified by the classic plate-with-a-circular-hole example, and after that it is applied to an airtight module for determining few key design parameters. By carefully analyzing results generated during the optimization process, it is convinced that the approach can become a viable means for designing similar aerospace structures.

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The challenges of designing a lightweight spacecraft structure for landing on the lunar surface

Cited by 11 publications

References 2 publications

Space Mining Robot Prototype for NASA Robotic Mining Competition Utilizing Systems Engineering Principles

Space Mining Robot Prototype for NASA Robotic Mining Competition Utilizing Systems Engineering Principles

Tensegrity Structures Apply to Spacecraft Structures: The State of the Art and Future Perspectives

A Shakedown Strength Based Parametric Optimization Technique and Its Application on an Airtight Module

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