MIE.34 – Asteroid Robotic Exploration Vehicle

• Ethan Timm
• Joseph Walsh

NASA, in collaboration with Arizona State University, will be launching the Psyche orbiter to the asteroid 16 Psyche in late 2022. The Psyche spacecraft will arrive in early 2026 for a 21-month long mission to survey the surface of this mysterious metallic asteroid and answer questions about the formation of our solar system. Due to the nature of this asteroid, it is likely that there will be significant interest in sending a follow-up mission to land on the asteroid and study the metallic surface up close. In this capstone project, the team has been assigned the task of designing and assembling a prototype robotic explorer that is capable of efficiently traversing the surface of the asteroid. Due to the relatively unknown surface conditions of the asteroid, the team had to review different hypothesized surfaces that may be present on 16 Psyche. The team established up with different design criteria, assumptions, and metrics that would be used in determining how effective our choice of robotic explorer would be in traversing any of these hypothesizes surfaces. The team selected a rover utilizing the rocker-bogie suspension system which is currently being utilized by NASA for rovers on the surface of the planet Mars, and would also be well suited to the surface of 16 Psyche. The team conducted ANSYS analysis on critical subsystems of the rover to ensure satisfactory performance, and tested the rover on different surfaces that could resemble the conditions on the asteroid.