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Kickstarting a space economy will require building communication relays, refueling depots, repair depots, habitats, and mining bases from in-situ resources in strategic locations between Earth, Moon, and Mars. Due to the high costs inherent in transporting resources from the Earth’s surface to these locations, new methods of material extraction and construction are necessary. Paramount to these development requirements is the need for a low-cost and efficient means for construction of habitats and physical structures. Utilizing networks of small spacecraft and robots to perform the task will reduce cost, enable scalability, and robustness. The idea of 3D printing structures has risen to the forefront of construction methods for its ability to be sent in advance of the primary mission and build structures autonomously. Two distinct challenges are inherent in this concept: the 3D printer needs to be supplied material, and it must have the ability to generate a significant amount of energy to process the material into its final form. Refining this printing technology to be as energy and resource efficient as possible is of the utmost importance to future space missions. Once this is achieved, it will be economical to build lunar and planetary bases rooting in in-situ resource utilization. Reducing the necessary supply of material to the additive manufacturing process and the power consumption leads to a reduction in the size of these early missions. In an effort to confront these challenges, we are working to develop an additive manufacturing process based on the principles of the selective laser sintering (SLS) technique, whereby a heat source (a laser in the case of SLS) heats the material just below its liquefaction point before returning to a solid form. By replacing the laser in the SLS process with a large Fresnel lens, we aim to focus enough sunlight to be able to sinter the material and create solid shapes. In this way, the system fully relies on renewable solar energy for its operation. In this paper, we propose development of solar additive manufacturing printers for melting and use of sand for construction. The paper will analyze the conceptualization, design, and prototype construction of the solar 3D printer. Current simulations are being done in support of the printer to determine best operating parameters and performance. Lesson learned from the simulations and prototype development will be used to develop a miniature scale printer for extended experiments.
Steven D. Anderson; Jekan Thangavelautham. Solar-Powered Additive Manufacturing in Extraterrestrial Environments. Earth and Space 2021 2021, 732 -744.
AMA StyleSteven D. Anderson, Jekan Thangavelautham. Solar-Powered Additive Manufacturing in Extraterrestrial Environments. Earth and Space 2021. 2021; ():732-744.
Chicago/Turabian StyleSteven D. Anderson; Jekan Thangavelautham. 2021. "Solar-Powered Additive Manufacturing in Extraterrestrial Environments." Earth and Space 2021 , no. : 732-744.
Asteroids, both in the main belt and the inner solar system, uniquely provide access to material resources without a significant gravity well or atmosphere. The composition of these small planetary bodies is likely to vary significantly between location and bodies, reflecting their particular history of formation and differentiation. This paper explores the viability of remotely evaluating chemical composition using an active laser source and spectrometry, possibly from a nano-spacecraft approaching the asteroid surface to within a distance of meters. By lasing and measuring spectral response over the surface of the asteroid, an aggregate understanding of its chemical composition can be obtained without the challenges associated with sample and return.
Leonard D. Vance; Yinan Xu; Jekan Thangavelautham. Remote Characterization of Asteroid Regolith with Active Spectroscopy. Earth and Space 2021 2021, 673 -684.
AMA StyleLeonard D. Vance, Yinan Xu, Jekan Thangavelautham. Remote Characterization of Asteroid Regolith with Active Spectroscopy. Earth and Space 2021. 2021; ():673-684.
Chicago/Turabian StyleLeonard D. Vance; Yinan Xu; Jekan Thangavelautham. 2021. "Remote Characterization of Asteroid Regolith with Active Spectroscopy." Earth and Space 2021 , no. : 673-684.
The Martian satellites Phobos and Deimos hold many unanswered questions that may provide clues to the origin of Mars. These moons are low Δv stopover sites to Mars. Some human missions to Mars typically identify Phobos and Deimos as staging bases for Mars surface exploration. Astronauts could base initial operations there in lieu of repeated voyages to and from the planet surface, to refuel transiting spacecraft, to teleoperate robotics and other critical machinery, and to develop habitable infrastructure ahead of human landings. Despite their strategic and scientific significance, there has been no successful dedicated mission to either moon. For this reason, we propose Perseus, a geological imaging CubeSat mission to Phobos. Perseus, a 27U, 54kg CubeSat will return thermal and visible images at resolutions better than currently available over most of Phobos’ surface. This includes visible images at 5m/pixel and thermal images at 25m/pixel of Phobos’ surface. The Perseus mission is nominally intended to be a co-orbital mission, where the spacecraft will encounter Phobos on its Martian orbit. However, a hyperbolic rendezvous mission concept, to image Phobos on a hyperbolic flyby, is also considered to reduce the risks associated with orbit capture and to reduce mission costs. This paper presents the preliminary feasibility, science objectives, and technological development challenges of achieving these science goals. We then formulate two rendezvous concepts as a series of three nonlinear optimization problems that span the design tree of mission concepts. The tree’s root node is the heliocentric cruise problem, which identifies the near-optimal launch and arrival windows for the Perseus spacecraft. The leaf nodes of the design tree are the two rendezvous concepts that identify near-optimal co-orbital and hyperbolic trajectories for Phobos’ reconnaissance. The design problems are solved using evolutionary algorithms, and the performance of the selected mission concepts is then examined. The results indicate that a co-orbital encounter allows about one encounter per day with about 6 min per encounter. The hyperbolic encounter, on the other hand, allows a single encounter where the spacecraft will spend about 2 min in the imaging region with respect to Phobos. The spacecraft will obtain higher resolution images of Phobos on this feasible region than have ever been seen for most of the surface. These detailed images will help identify candidate landing sites and provide critical data to derisk future surface missions to Phobos.
Ravi Teja Nallapu; Graham Dektor; Nalik Kenia; James Uglietta; Shota Ichikawa; Mercedes Herreras-Martinez; Akshay Choudhari; Aman Chandra; Stephen Schwartz; Erik Asphaug; Jekanthan Thangavelautham. Trajectory Design of Perseus: A CubeSat Mission Concept to Phobos. Aerospace 2020, 7, 179 .
AMA StyleRavi Teja Nallapu, Graham Dektor, Nalik Kenia, James Uglietta, Shota Ichikawa, Mercedes Herreras-Martinez, Akshay Choudhari, Aman Chandra, Stephen Schwartz, Erik Asphaug, Jekanthan Thangavelautham. Trajectory Design of Perseus: A CubeSat Mission Concept to Phobos. Aerospace. 2020; 7 (12):179.
Chicago/Turabian StyleRavi Teja Nallapu; Graham Dektor; Nalik Kenia; James Uglietta; Shota Ichikawa; Mercedes Herreras-Martinez; Akshay Choudhari; Aman Chandra; Stephen Schwartz; Erik Asphaug; Jekanthan Thangavelautham. 2020. "Trajectory Design of Perseus: A CubeSat Mission Concept to Phobos." Aerospace 7, no. 12: 179.
Ravi Teja Nallapu; Jekan Thangavelautham. Design and sensitivity analysis of spacecraft swarms for planetary moon reconnaissance through co-orbits. Acta Astronautica 2020, 178, 854 -869.
AMA StyleRavi Teja Nallapu, Jekan Thangavelautham. Design and sensitivity analysis of spacecraft swarms for planetary moon reconnaissance through co-orbits. Acta Astronautica. 2020; 178 ():854-869.
Chicago/Turabian StyleRavi Teja Nallapu; Jekan Thangavelautham. 2020. "Design and sensitivity analysis of spacecraft swarms for planetary moon reconnaissance through co-orbits." Acta Astronautica 178, no. : 854-869.
The miniaturization of electronics, sensors, and actuators has enabled the growing use of nanosatellites for earth observation, astrophysics, and even interplanetary missions. This rise of nanosatellites has led to the development of an inventory of modular, interchangeable commercially-off-the-shelf (COTS) components by a multitude of commercial vendors. As a result, the capability of combining subsystems in a compact platform has considerably advanced in the last decade. However, to ascertain these spacecraft’s maximum capabilities in terms of mass, volume, and power, there is an important need to optimize their design. Current spacecraft design methods need engineering experience and judgements made by of a team of experts, which can be labor intensive and might lead to a sub-optimal design. In this work we present a compelling alternative approach using machine learning to identify near-optimal solutions to extend the capabilities of a design team. The approach enables automated design of a spacecraft that requires developing a virtual warehouse of components and specifying quantitative goals to produce a candidate design. The near-optimal solutions found through this approach would be a credible starting point for the design team that will need further study to determine their implementation feasibility.
Himangshu Kalita; Jekan Thangavelautham. Automated Design of CubeSats using Evolutionary Algorithm for Trade Space Selection. Aerospace 2020, 7, 142 .
AMA StyleHimangshu Kalita, Jekan Thangavelautham. Automated Design of CubeSats using Evolutionary Algorithm for Trade Space Selection. Aerospace. 2020; 7 (10):142.
Chicago/Turabian StyleHimangshu Kalita; Jekan Thangavelautham. 2020. "Automated Design of CubeSats using Evolutionary Algorithm for Trade Space Selection." Aerospace 7, no. 10: 142.
This work describes the design and optimization of spacecraft swarm missions to meet spatial and temporal visual mapping requirements of missions to planetary moons, using resonant co-orbits. The algorithms described here are a part of Integrated Design Engineering and Automation of Swarms (IDEAS), a spacecraft swarm mission design software that automates the design trajectories, swarm, and spacecraft behaviors in the mission. In the current work, we focus on the swarm design and optimization features of IDEAS, while showing the interaction between the different design modules. In the design segment, we consider the coverage requirements of two general planetary moon mapping missions: global surface mapping and region of interest observation. The configuration of the swarm co-orbits for the two missions is described, where the participating spacecraft have resonant encounters with the moon on their orbital apoapsis. We relate the swarm design to trajectory design through the orbit insertion maneuver performed on the interplanetary trajectory using aero-braking. We then present algorithms to model visual coverage, and collision avoidance in the swarm. To demonstrate the interaction between different design modules, we relate the trajectory and swarm to spacecraft design through fuel mass, and mission cost estimations using preliminary models. In the optimization segment, we formulate the trajectory and swarm design optimizations for the two missions as Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) problems. In the current work, we use Genetic Algorithm as the primary optimization solver. However, we also use the Particle Swarm Optimizer to compare the optimizer performance. Finally, the algorithms described here are demonstrated through numerical case studies, where the two visual mapping missions are designed to explore the Martian moon Deimos.
Ravi Teja Nallapu; Jekan Thangavelautham. Automated design architectures for co-orbiting spacecraft swarms for planetary moon mapping. Advances in Space Research 2020, 67, 3559 -3582.
AMA StyleRavi Teja Nallapu, Jekan Thangavelautham. Automated design architectures for co-orbiting spacecraft swarms for planetary moon mapping. Advances in Space Research. 2020; 67 (11):3559-3582.
Chicago/Turabian StyleRavi Teja Nallapu; Jekan Thangavelautham. 2020. "Automated design architectures for co-orbiting spacecraft swarms for planetary moon mapping." Advances in Space Research 67, no. 11: 3559-3582.
The discovery of living organisms under extreme environmental conditions of pressure, temperature, and chemical composition on Earth has opened up the possibility of existence and persistence of life in extreme environment pockets across the solar system. These environments range from the many intriguing moons, to the deep atmospheres of Venus and even the giant gas planets, to the small icy worlds of comets and Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs). Exploring these environments can ascertain the range of conditions that can support life and can also identify planetary processes that are responsible for generating and sustaining habitable worlds. These environments are also time capsules into early formation of the solar system and will provide vital clues of how our early solar system gave way to the current planets and moons. Over the last few decades, numerous missions started with flyby spacecraft, followed by orbiting satellites and missions with orbiter/lander capabilities. Since then, there have been numerous missions that have utilized rovers of ever-increasing size and complexity, equipped with state-of-the-art laboratories on wheels. Although current generations of rovers achieve mobility through wheels, there are fundamental limitations that prevent these rovers from accessing rugged environments, cliffs, canyons, and caves. These rugged environments are often the first places geologist look to observe stratification from geohistorical processes. There is an important need for new robot mobility solutions, like hopping, rolling, crawling, and walking that can access these rugged environments like cliffs, canyons, and caves. These new generations of rovers have some extraordinary capabilities including being able to grip onto rocks like NASA/JPL LEMUR 2, operate in swarms such as MIT’s microbots, or have high-specific energy fuel cell power supply that is approximately 40-fold higher than conventional lithium ion batteries to Stanford/NASA JPL’s Hedgehog which is able to hop and somersault in low-gravity environments such asteroids. All of these mobility options and supporting technologies have been proposed and developed to explore these hard-to-reach unconventional environments. This article provides a review of the robotic systems developed over the past few decades, in addition to new state-of-the-art concepts that are leading contenders for future missions to explore extreme environments on Earth and off-world.
Himangshu Kalita; Jekan Thangavelautham. Exploration of Extreme Environments with Currentand Emerging Robot Systems. Current Robotics Reports 2020, 1, 97 -104.
AMA StyleHimangshu Kalita, Jekan Thangavelautham. Exploration of Extreme Environments with Currentand Emerging Robot Systems. Current Robotics Reports. 2020; 1 (3):97-104.
Chicago/Turabian StyleHimangshu Kalita; Jekan Thangavelautham. 2020. "Exploration of Extreme Environments with Currentand Emerging Robot Systems." Current Robotics Reports 1, no. 3: 97-104.
There is growing interest in expanding beyond space exploration and pursuing the dream of living and working in space. The next critical step towards living and working in space requires kick-starting a space economy. One important challenge with this space-economy is ensuring the ready supply and low-cost availability of raw materials. The escape delta-v of 11.2 km/s from Earth makes transportation of materials from Earth very costly. Transporting materials from the Moon takes 2.4 km/s and from Mars 5.0 km/s. Based on these factors, the Moon and Mars can become colonies to export material into this space economy. One critical question is what are the resources required to sustain a space economy? Water has been identified as a critical resource both to sustain human-life but also for use in propulsion, attitude-control, power, thermal storage and radiation protection systems. Water may be obtained off-world through In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) in the course of human or robotic space exploration. The Moon is also rich in iron, titanium and silicon. Based upon these important findings, we plan on developing an energy model to determine the feasibility of developing a mining base on the Moon. This mining base mines and principally exports water, titanium and steel. The moon has been selected, as there are significant reserves of water known to exists at the permanently shadowed crater regions and there are significant sources of titanium and iron throughout the Moon's surface. Our designs for a mining base utilize renewable energy sources namely photovoltaics and solar-thermal concentrators to provide power to construct the base, keep it operational and export water and other resources using a Mass Driver. However, the site where large quantities of water are present lack sunlight and hence the water needs to be transported using rail from the southern region to base located at mid latitude. Using the energy model developed, we will determine the energy per Earth-day to export 100 tons each of water, titanium and low-grade steel into Lunar escape velocity and to the Earth-Moon Lagrange points. Our study of water and metal mining on the Moon found the key to keeping the mining base efficient is to make it robotic. Teams of robots (consisting of 300 infrastructure robots) would be used to construct the entire base using locally available resources and fully operate the base. This would decrease energy needs by 15-folds. Furthermore, the base can be built 15-times faster using robotics and 3D printing. This shows that automation and robotics is the key to making such a base technologically feasible. The Moon is a lot closer to Earth than Mars and the prospect of having a greater impact on the space economy cannot be stressed. Our study intends to determine the cost-benefit analysis of lunar resource mining.
Jekan Thangavelautham; Aman Chandra; Erik Jensen. Autonomous Robot Teams for Lunar Mining Base Construction and Operation. 2020 IEEE Aerospace Conference 2020, 1 -16.
AMA StyleJekan Thangavelautham, Aman Chandra, Erik Jensen. Autonomous Robot Teams for Lunar Mining Base Construction and Operation. 2020 IEEE Aerospace Conference. 2020; ():1-16.
Chicago/Turabian StyleJekan Thangavelautham; Aman Chandra; Erik Jensen. 2020. "Autonomous Robot Teams for Lunar Mining Base Construction and Operation." 2020 IEEE Aerospace Conference , no. : 1-16.
Exploration of extreme environments, including caves, canyons and cliffs on low-gravity surfaces such as the Moon, Mars and asteroid surfaces can provide insight into the geological history of the solar system, origins of life, and prospects for future habitation and resource exploitation. Although current methods of exploration utilizing wheeled ground rovers have excellent performance on relatively flat, benign, even terrains, they are unsuitable for exploring these extreme environments due to their inability to travers rugged environments as their obstacle traversing capabilities are typically limited to wheel diameter, and reduced traction on low-gravity environments. So, developing small, cost-effective robots that can utilize unconventional mode of mobility through ballistic hopping can overcome these limitations. Our past work has proposed using a spherical robot (SphereX) that achieves ballistic hopping mobility through the use of a miniaturized propulsion system and 3-axis reaction wheel system. In this paper, we present the design and control analysis of a mechanical hopping mechanism that can be used for SphereX. The mechanism is comprised of two mechanical systems to produce its ability to maneuver terrain and achieve mobility through ballistic hopping. On the robot's interior, it consists of an electric gearmotor attached to a set of gears, a spring, and a rubber foot. These components make up the hopping mechanism used to hop the robot by applying a force along the longitudinal axis of the spring between the rubber foot and the ground. However, the robot needs to be oriented in a desired orientation in order to achieve ballistic hopping and intercept a desired target. This is achieved through a secondary mechanical system that consists of three linear actuators each connected to levers which are mounted to the exterior of the robot's shell. The lever and the linear actuator system are used to orient the robot in a desired orientation so that when the hopping mechanism is deployed it will be launched in a ballistic trajectory to intercept a desired target. Although the spring based hopping mechanism provides a constant force, but the lever and linear actuator-based system is used to orient the robot at different angles to produce range in mobility. The robot also consists of electronics and sensors equivalent to current smartphones, an array of guidance, navigation and control sensors, lithium-ion battery-based power system and a volume for science payload.
Himangshu Kalita; Troy M. Jameson; George Stancu; Jekan Thangavelautham. Design and Analysis of a Mechanical Hopping Mechanism Suited for Exploring Low-gravity Environments. 2020 IEEE Aerospace Conference 2020, 1 -10.
AMA StyleHimangshu Kalita, Troy M. Jameson, George Stancu, Jekan Thangavelautham. Design and Analysis of a Mechanical Hopping Mechanism Suited for Exploring Low-gravity Environments. 2020 IEEE Aerospace Conference. 2020; ():1-10.
Chicago/Turabian StyleHimangshu Kalita; Troy M. Jameson; George Stancu; Jekan Thangavelautham. 2020. "Design and Analysis of a Mechanical Hopping Mechanism Suited for Exploring Low-gravity Environments." 2020 IEEE Aerospace Conference , no. : 1-10.
High-resolution orbital imagery from the LROC reveals evidence of subsurface voids and mare-pits on the lunar surface. Similar discoveries have been made with the HiRISE camera onboard the MRO observing the Martian surface. These accessible voids could be used for a future human base because they offer a natural radiation and micrometeorite shield and offer constant habitable temperatures. Exploration of these extreme and rugged environments remains out of reach from current planetary rovers and landers. A credible solution is to develop an architecture that permits taking high exploratory risks that translates into high reward science. Rapid advancement in electronics, sensors, actuators, and power have resulted in ever-shrinking devices and instruments that can be housed in small platforms. We propose to use a small, low-cost, modular spherical robot called SphereX that is designed to hop and roll short distances. Each robot is of several kilograms in mass and several liters in volume. Each SphereX will consist of space-qualified electronics like command & data handling board, power board for power management and s-band radio transceiver for communication. Power is provided using lithium-ion primary batteries or a PEM fuel cell power supply. Communication is established through multi-hop communication link to relay data from inside the caves to a lander outside on the planetary surface. Since the temperature inside underground lunar pits is expected at -25°C, thermal management for the space-grade electronics is minimal as they can operate up to -40°C, however thermal management for the battery pack and the propellants will be done through active and passive elements. Moreover, SphereX requires use of a propulsion system and Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS) to perform controlled ballistic hops. Hopping on very-low gravity environments is more time-efficient than rolling due to the reduced traction. In this paper, we present detailed analysis of each subsystem of SphereX and also detailed dynamics and control simulations of SphereX for ballistic hopping and rolling mobility. For ballistic hopping control, the robot has two modes: soft landing mode for traversing long distances and entering the pit through its collapsed entrance, and a fuel-efficient hard landing mode for traversing short distances. We will then present experimental results for mapping unknown cave-like environments which is done using a quadcopter for simulating low-gravity (e.g. Moon, Mars) environments and testing the control algorithms. The quadcopter mimics the dynamics of SphereX and also carries a 3D LiDAR for mapping and navigation. 3D point cloud data collected by the LiDAR is used for performing SLAM and path planning in unknown and GPS-denied environments much like the pits, caves and lava tubes on the Moon and Mars.
Himangshu Kalita; Akash S. Gholap; Jekan Thangavelautham. Dynamics and Control of a Hopping Robot for Extreme Environment Exploration on the Moon and Mars. 2020 IEEE Aerospace Conference 2020, 1 -12.
AMA StyleHimangshu Kalita, Akash S. Gholap, Jekan Thangavelautham. Dynamics and Control of a Hopping Robot for Extreme Environment Exploration on the Moon and Mars. 2020 IEEE Aerospace Conference. 2020; ():1-12.
Chicago/Turabian StyleHimangshu Kalita; Akash S. Gholap; Jekan Thangavelautham. 2020. "Dynamics and Control of a Hopping Robot for Extreme Environment Exploration on the Moon and Mars." 2020 IEEE Aerospace Conference , no. : 1-12.
The surfaces of asteroids are a challenging environment to explore due to their low gravity. Active small-body missions rely on short-duration touch-and-go operations to mitigate this risk. An in-depth understanding of the surface geophysics of asteroids and comets can open the door to prolonged surface and subsurface exploration of these small bodies. We propose the AOSAT+ mission concept, which will provide rich physics data of a simulated asteroid surface. The mission consists of a 12U CubeSat that will operate as a centrifuge laboratory in low Earth orbit (LEO). The CubeSat will carry 2.5 kg of crushed Allende meteorite, along with a suite of science instruments. The spacecraft will rotate at 0.1 to 1.1 RPM to simulate the milli-gravity environment of a desired small body. A major challenge with operating a centrifuging spacecraft is that it contains shifting masses, which result in perturbation torques on the spacecraft. This requires a robust attitude controller to spin the spacecraft at its target rotation speed. This work presents the development of a sliding mode attitude control law that enables the operation of the AOSAT+ Centrifuge mode. The perturbations of the regolith are modeled using a discrete element model (DEM), where the regolith grains are treated as inelastically colliding hard spheres. We begin by presenting a detailed overview of the AOSAT+ mission concept and its different operations. The regolith motion model implementation and the detailed derivation of the required sliding mode controller are then presented. The constraints presented by the actuators and tools to study their limitations are then developed. Finally, the controller is shown to successfully demonstrate the spin rate requirements of the AOSAT+ Centrifuge mode. Key insights on the operation of the Centrifuge mode, and important mission design considerations on the spacecraft are then noted.
Ravi Teja Nallapu; Stephen R. Schwartz; Erik Asphaug; Jekan Thangavelautham. Robust Spin Control Design for the AOSAT+ Mission Concept. IEEE Journal on Miniaturization for Air and Space Systems 2020, 1, 10 -31.
AMA StyleRavi Teja Nallapu, Stephen R. Schwartz, Erik Asphaug, Jekan Thangavelautham. Robust Spin Control Design for the AOSAT+ Mission Concept. IEEE Journal on Miniaturization for Air and Space Systems. 2020; 1 (1):10-31.
Chicago/Turabian StyleRavi Teja Nallapu; Stephen R. Schwartz; Erik Asphaug; Jekan Thangavelautham. 2020. "Robust Spin Control Design for the AOSAT+ Mission Concept." IEEE Journal on Miniaturization for Air and Space Systems 1, no. 1: 10-31.
The Lunar Gateway is expected to be positioned on-orbit around the Moon or in a Halo orbit at the L2 Lagrange point. The proposed Lunar Gateway is a game-changer for enabling new science utilizing CubeSats and presents a refreshing new opportunity for utilization of these small spacecraft as explorers. We propose to develop a Lunar CubeSat Lander that will be deployed from the Lunar Gateway Logistics Module (presumed to be at L2) to perform science and exploration of the lunar surface. The CubeSat lander will land near Mare Tranquilitatis to determine the extent of the void and identify the presence of volatile resources including water in its regolith. The CubeSat lander is a 27U with stowed dimensions of 34 cm×35 cm×36 cm and mass of 54 kg. It will be deployed from the Lunar Gateway and perform a lunar orbit insertion by using its onboard High-Performance Green Propulsion (HPGP) system followed by descent maneuver to get into a 25 km altitude from the lunar surface. From there, the lander will get into a powered descent maneuver over Mare Tranquilitatis taking 4-6 minutes. Onboard visual navigation will be used to land on the Mare Tranquilitatis Region by rapidly firing the descent thrusters. The lander is equipped with a Volatile Analysis by Pyrolysis of Regolith (VAPoR) instrument to perform pyrolysis and mass spectrometry of lunar regolith. Moreover, it will carry three spherical hopping robots (SphereX) that will hop inside the pit to perform mapping and electrical impedance spectroscopy of regolith inside the pit to determine the presence to water.
Himangshu Kalita; Jekan Thangavelautham. Lunar CubeSat Lander to Explore Mare Tranquilitatis pit. AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum 2020, 1 .
AMA StyleHimangshu Kalita, Jekan Thangavelautham. Lunar CubeSat Lander to Explore Mare Tranquilitatis pit. AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum. 2020; ():1.
Chicago/Turabian StyleHimangshu Kalita; Jekan Thangavelautham. 2020. "Lunar CubeSat Lander to Explore Mare Tranquilitatis pit." AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum , no. : 1.
Leonard D. Vance; Ravi Teja Nallapu; Jekan Thangavelautham. Solar Sailing Fundamentals with an Exploration of Trajectory Control to Lunar Halo Orbit. AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum 2020, 1 .
AMA StyleLeonard D. Vance, Ravi Teja Nallapu, Jekan Thangavelautham. Solar Sailing Fundamentals with an Exploration of Trajectory Control to Lunar Halo Orbit. AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum. 2020; ():1.
Chicago/Turabian StyleLeonard D. Vance; Ravi Teja Nallapu; Jekan Thangavelautham. 2020. "Solar Sailing Fundamentals with an Exploration of Trajectory Control to Lunar Halo Orbit." AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum , no. : 1.
Kickstarting the space economy requires identification of critical resources that can lower the cost of space transport, sustain logistic bases and communication relay networks between major nodes in the network. One important challenge with this space-economy is ensuring the low-cost transport of raw materials from one gravity-well to another. The escape delta-v of 11.2 km/s from Earth makes this proposition very expensive. Transporting materials from the Moon takes 2.4 km/s and from Mars 5.0 km/s. Based on these factors, the Moon and Mars have the potential to export material into this space economy. Water has been identified as a critical resource both to sustain human-life but also for use in propulsion, attitude-control, power, thermal storage and radiation protection systems. Water may be obtained off-world through In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) in the course of human or robotic space exploration. There is also important need for construction materials such as aluminum, iron/steel, and titanium. Based upon these important findings, we have developed an energy model to determine the feasibility of developing a mining base on the Moon and Mars. These mining base mine and principally exports water, aluminum, titanium and steel. The moon has significant reserves of water known to exists at the permanently shadowed crater regions and there are significant sources of titanium, aluminum and iron throughout the Moon’s surface. Mars also has significant quantities of water in the form of hydrates, in addition to reserves of iron, titanium and aluminum. Our designs for a mining base utilize renewable energy sources namely photovoltaics and solar-thermal concentrators to provide power to construct the base, keep it operational and export water and other resources using a Mass Driver. Using the energy model developed, we will determine the energy per Earth-day to export 100 tons each of water, titanium, aluminum and low-grade steel into escape velocity of the Moon and Mars. We perform a detailed comparison of the energy required for construction of similar bases on the Moon and Mars, in addition to the operating energy required for regolith excavation, processing, refining and finally transport off-the-body. In this process, we consider multiple critical technologies including use of humans predominantly to construct and operate the base and alternately the use of robot teams. In addition, we also consider the use of additive manufacturing to print a base out of local materials or use of traditional building techniques. Our comparative study finds that an equivalent Martian base requires twice as much energy for construction than a lunar base, this is to enable the base to withstand the higher gravity. This also accounts for the energy required to process the local raw material into construction feedstock. A Martian base requires significantly more energy for day to day operations due to the higher gravity, requiring 2.4-folds more energy,...
Jekan Thangavelautham. Autonomous Robot Swarms for Off-World Construction and Resource Mining. AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum 2020, 1 .
AMA StyleJekan Thangavelautham. Autonomous Robot Swarms for Off-World Construction and Resource Mining. AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum. 2020; ():1.
Chicago/Turabian StyleJekan Thangavelautham. 2020. "Autonomous Robot Swarms for Off-World Construction and Resource Mining." AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum , no. : 1.
Exploration of small bodies brings insight to the origins of the life, the Earth, and the solar system. However, attempting surface missions to small-bodies with inadequate gravity field information is prone to high-risk of failure. Spacecraft flybys can be a viable approach to perform an initial reconnaissance before a surface mission can be deployed. The challenge with flybys is that they are time and coverage limited thus providing only a limited glimpse of the target. These disadvantages can be overcome using a swarm approach. While swarms are important platforms for small-body exploration, their mission design is a complex design problem, and more importantly, there is no end-to-end tool for designing spacecraft swarm missions. This paper presents IDEAS, an end-to-end mission design architecture that designs swarm missions for small body flyby exploration. The IDEAS platform, at its heart, will have three automated design modules corresponding to spacecraft design, swarm design, and trajectory design. In our previous work, we developed the Automated Swarm Designer module of the IDEAS platform to explore uniformly rotating asteroids. The current work will focus on enabling the IDEAS architecture to design visual mapping missions to planetary moons through spacecraft swarm flybys. Specifically, a swarm of spacecraft will be designed to explore a target moon through multiple encounters at different orbital locations using hyperbolic trajectories around the central planet. The objective of the designed swarm is to produce a detailed surface map of the moon with a minimum number of spacecraft. Here, we show that the design of swarm trajectories will result in a boundary value problem, where we have a rendezvous location and an excess velocity asymptote. This boundary value problem will be formulated as a system of non-linear equations which will then be solved using an iterative scheme. The solutions to this will specify a hyperbolic reconnaissance trajectory of a participating spacecraft in the swarm. We then determine the optimal set of these flyby trajectories using an evolutionary search algorithm to meet the required coverage criterion with a minimum number of spacecraft. Finally, the algorithms developed in this work are demonstrated through a theoretical example of designing a reconnaissance mission to the Martian moon Phobos.
Ravi Teja Nallapu; Jekan Thangavelautham. Design of Spacecraft Swarm Flybys for Planetary Moon Exploration. AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum 2020, 1 .
AMA StyleRavi Teja Nallapu, Jekan Thangavelautham. Design of Spacecraft Swarm Flybys for Planetary Moon Exploration. AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum. 2020; ():1.
Chicago/Turabian StyleRavi Teja Nallapu; Jekan Thangavelautham. 2020. "Design of Spacecraft Swarm Flybys for Planetary Moon Exploration." AIAA Scitech 2020 Forum , no. : 1.
The exploration of small bodies in the Solar System is a high priority planetary science. Asteroids, comets, and planetary moons yield important information about the evolution of the Solar System. Additionally, they could provide resources for a future space economy. While much research has gone into exploring asteroids and comets, dedicated spacecraft missions to planetary moons are few and far between. There are three fundamental challenges of a spacecraft mission to the planetary moons: The first challenge is that the spheres of influence of most moons (except that of Earth) are small and, in many cases, virtually absent. The second is that many moons are tidally locked to their planets, which means that an observer on the planet will have an entire hemisphere, which is always inaccessible. The third challenge is that at a given time about half of the region will be in the Sun's shadow. Therefore, a single spacecraft mission to observe the planetary moon cannot provide complete coverage. Such a complex task can be solved using a swarm approach, where the mapping task is delegated to multiple low-cost spacecraft. Clearly, the design of a swarm mission for such a dynamic environment is challenging. For this reason, we have proposed the Integrated Design Engineering & Automation of Swarms (IDEAS) software to perform automated end-to-end design of swarm missions. Specifically, it will use a sub-module known as the Automated Swarm Designer module to find optimal swarm configurations suited for a given mission. In our previous work, we have developed the Automated Swarm Design module to find swarm configurations for asteroid mapping operations. In this work, we will evaluate the capability of the Automated Swarm module to design missions to planetary moons.
Ravi Teja Nallapu; Jekan Thangavelautham. Towards End-To-End Design of Spacecraft Swarms for Small-Body Reconnaissance. 2019, 1 .
AMA StyleRavi Teja Nallapu, Jekan Thangavelautham. Towards End-To-End Design of Spacecraft Swarms for Small-Body Reconnaissance. . 2019; ():1.
Chicago/Turabian StyleRavi Teja Nallapu; Jekan Thangavelautham. 2019. "Towards End-To-End Design of Spacecraft Swarms for Small-Body Reconnaissance." , no. : 1.
The next frontier in solar system exploration will be missions targeting extreme and rugged environments such as caves, canyons, cliffs and crater rims of the Moon, Mars and icy moons. These environments are time capsules into early formation of the solar system and will provide vital clues of how our early solar system gave way to the current planets and moons. These sites will also provide vital clues to the past and present habitability of these environments. Current landers and rovers are unable to access these areas of high interest due to limitations in precision landing techniques, need for large and sophisticated science instruments and a mission assurance and operations culture where risks are minimized at all costs. Our past work has shown the advantages of using multiple spherical hopping robots called SphereX for exploring these extreme environments. Our previous work was based on performing exploration with a human-designed baseline design of a SphereX robot. However, the design of SphereX is a complex task that involves a large number of design variables and multiple engineering disciplines. In this work we propose to use Automated Multidisciplinary Design and Control Optimization (AMDCO) techniques to find near optimal design solutions in terms of mass, volume, power, and control for SphereX for different mission scenarios.
Himangshu Kalita; Jekan Thangavelautham. Automated Multidisciplinary Design and Control of Hopping Robots for Exploration of Extreme Environments on the Moon and Mars. 2019, 1 .
AMA StyleHimangshu Kalita, Jekan Thangavelautham. Automated Multidisciplinary Design and Control of Hopping Robots for Exploration of Extreme Environments on the Moon and Mars. . 2019; ():1.
Chicago/Turabian StyleHimangshu Kalita; Jekan Thangavelautham. 2019. "Automated Multidisciplinary Design and Control of Hopping Robots for Exploration of Extreme Environments on the Moon and Mars." , no. : 1.
Beyond space exploration, the next critical step towards living and working in space requires developing a space economy. One important challenge with this space-economy is ensuring the low-cost transport of raw materials from one gravity-well to another. The escape delta-v of 11.2 km/s from Earth makes this proposition very expensive. Transporting materials from the Moon takes 2.4 km/s and from Mars 5.0 km/s. Based on these factors, the Moon and Mars can become colonies to export material into this space economy. One critical question is what are the resources required to sustain a space economy? Water has been identified as a critical resource both to sustain human-life but also for use in propulsion, attitude-control, power, thermal storage and radiation protection systems. Water may be obtained off-world through In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) in the course of human or robotic space exploration. Based upon these important findings, we developed an energy model to determine the feasibility of developing a mining base on Mars that mines and exports water (transports water on a Mars escape trajectory). Our designs for a mining base utilize renewable energy sources namely photovoltaics and solar-thermal concentrators to provide power to construct the base, keep it operational and export the water using a mass driver (electrodynamic railgun). Our studies found the key to keeping the mining base simple and effective is to make it robotic. Teams of robots (consisting of 100 infrastructure robots) would be used to construct the entire base using locally available resources and fully operate the base. This would decrease energy needs by 5-folds. Furthermore, the base can be built 5-times faster using robotics and 3D printing. This shows that automation and robotics is the key to making such a base technologically feasible.
Jekan Thangavelautham; Aman Chandra; Erik Jensen. Autonomous Multirobot Technologies for Mars Mining Base Construction and Operation. 2019, 1 .
AMA StyleJekan Thangavelautham, Aman Chandra, Erik Jensen. Autonomous Multirobot Technologies for Mars Mining Base Construction and Operation. . 2019; ():1.
Chicago/Turabian StyleJekan Thangavelautham; Aman Chandra; Erik Jensen. 2019. "Autonomous Multirobot Technologies for Mars Mining Base Construction and Operation." , no. : 1.
The science and origins of asteroids is deemed high priority in the Planetary Science Decadal Survey. Two of the main questions from the Decadal Survey pertain to what the "initial stages, conditions, and processes of solar system formation and the nature of the interstellar matter" that was present in the protoplanetary disk, as well as determining the "primordial sources for organic matter." Major scientific goals for the study of planetesimals are to decipher geological processes in SSSBs not determinable from investigation via in situ experimentation, and to understand how planetesimals contribute to the formation of planets. Ground based observations are not sufficient to examine SSSBs, as they are only able to measure what is on the surface of the body; however, in situ analysis allows for further, close up investigation as to the surface characteristics and the inner composure of the body. The Asteroid Mobile Imager and Geologic Observer (AMIGO) is a 1U stowed autonomous robot that can perform surface hopping on an asteroid with an inflatable structure. It contains science instruments to provide stereo context imaging, micro-imaging, seismic sensing, and electric field measurements. Multiple hopping robots are deployed as a team to eliminate single-point failure and add robustness to data collection. An on-board attitude control system consists of a thruster chip of discretized micro-nozzles that provides hopping thrust and a reaction wheel for controlling the third axis. For the continued development of the robot, an engineering model is developed to test various components and algorithms.
Greg Wilburn; Himangshu Kalita; Jekan Thangavelautham. Development and Testing of an Engineering Model for an Asteroid Hopping Robot. 2019, 1 .
AMA StyleGreg Wilburn, Himangshu Kalita, Jekan Thangavelautham. Development and Testing of an Engineering Model for an Asteroid Hopping Robot. . 2019; ():1.
Chicago/Turabian StyleGreg Wilburn; Himangshu Kalita; Jekan Thangavelautham. 2019. "Development and Testing of an Engineering Model for an Asteroid Hopping Robot." , no. : 1.
There are thousands of asteroids in near-Earth space and millions expected in the Main Belt. They are diverse in their physical properties and compositions. They are also time capsules of the early Solar System making them valuable for planetary science, and are strategic for resource mining, planetary defense/security and as interplanetary depots. But we lack direct knowledge of the geophysical behavior of an asteroid surface under milligravity conditions, and therefore landing on an asteroid and manipulating its surface material remains a daunting challenge. Towards this goal we are putting forth plans for a 12U CubeSat that will be in Low Earth Orbit and that will operate as a spinning centrifuge on-orbit. In this paper, we will present an overview of the systems engineering and instrumentation design on the spacecraft. Parts of this 12U CubeSat will contain a laboratory that will recreate asteroid surface conditions by containing crushed meteorite. The laboratory will spin at 1 to 2 RPM during the primary mission to simulate surface conditions of asteroids 2 km and smaller, followed by an extended mission where the spacecraft will spin at even higher RPM. The result is a bed of realistic regolith, the environment that landers and diggers and maybe astronauts will interact with. The CubeSat is configured with cameras, lasers, actuators and small mechanical instruments to both observe and manipulate the regolith at low simulated gravity conditions. A series of experiments will measure the general behavior, internal friction, adhesion, dilatancy, coefficients of restitution and other parameters that can feed into asteroid surface dynamics simulations. Effective gravity can be varied, and external mechanical forces can be applied. These centrifuge facilities in space will require significantly less resources and budget to maintain, operating in LEO, compared to the voyages to deep space. This means we can maintain a persistent presence in the relevant deep space environment without having to go there. Having asteroid-like centrifuges in LEO would serve the important tactical goal of preparing and maintaining readiness, even when missions are delayed or individual programs get cancelled.
Jekan Thangavelautham; Erik Asphaug; Stephen Schwartz. An On-Orbit CubeSat Centrifuge for Asteroid Science and Exploration. 2019 IEEE Aerospace Conference 2019, 1 -11.
AMA StyleJekan Thangavelautham, Erik Asphaug, Stephen Schwartz. An On-Orbit CubeSat Centrifuge for Asteroid Science and Exploration. 2019 IEEE Aerospace Conference. 2019; ():1-11.
Chicago/Turabian StyleJekan Thangavelautham; Erik Asphaug; Stephen Schwartz. 2019. "An On-Orbit CubeSat Centrifuge for Asteroid Science and Exploration." 2019 IEEE Aerospace Conference , no. : 1-11.