Astrobotic unveils Polaris lunar rover design

Astrobotic's Polaris prospects for water at the lunar poles. With 3 vertical solar panels generating 250 watts and two radiator panels to shed excess heat, the Polaris design features stereo cameras and laser sensors to create 3-D video and digital models its surroundings. The robot communicates directly with Earth using a directional S-band antenna. Polaris will carry up to 70 kg in payload, i.e., core drill and science instruments to identify water content. Polaris is capable of autonomously traversal of permanently shadowed areas and will be equipped with variable height suspension for clearance or drilling angles. The suspension will maintains four-wheel ground contact without springs [Astrobotic Technologies, Inc.].

John Thornton
Astronbotic

Astrobotic today announced completion of a prototype lunar prospecting rover, Polaris, to search for water ice at the Moon's poles.  The rover will prospect for water, oxygen, methane, and other volatiles which could be useful for energy, supporting life, and producing rocket fuel.  "This rover is a first step toward using off-Earth resources to further human exploration of our solar system," said John Thornton, President. 

Polaris is specialized for drilling at the Moon's pole which is characterized by low glancing sun angles and operation near shadowed regions that can reach cryogenic temperatures.  The rover is tall enough to deploy a 4ft drill and produce 250W of power with solar panels oriented toward the Sun, which stays just above above the horizon.

Polaris, 1.63 meters wide and 2.4 meters long, can move at 30 cm a second on 60 cm-diameter wheels.  The rover weighs 150 kg, and will accommodate a drill and science instruments of up to 70 kilograms.

Computer vision determines the rover's position on the Moon within 3 meters. "It's game changing for lunar surface exploration and we're the ones to pursue it," said William "Red" Whittaker, CEO.  Without GPS, Polaris will match surface pictures with satellite imagery taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to determine its location on the Moon.

The rover features wheels and chassis beams constructed of light, tough composite materials.   The lighter structural materials minimize overall weight while accommodating the heavy drill and massive batteries required for this mission.

Astrobotic has won nine lunar contracts from NASA worth $3.6 million, including one to evaluate how Polaris can accommodate NASA’s ice-prospecting instruments during a 5k traverse near the Moon’s north pole.

Payload User's Guide.

Potential lunar ISRU experiments and missions

Scarab concept lunar rover (undergoing analog testing in Hawai'i in 2009), a test-bed for the Lunar Polar Resource Characterization precursor mission concept. Robotic missions designed to determine the precise nature of volatiles within permanently darkened regions on the Moon (such as Cabeus, impact site of LCROSS in 2009) will necessarily need to be robust [NASA].

Gerald B. Sanders
Lunar Surface System Office
NASA JSC

Extraction and use of resources on the Moon, known as In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), can potentially reduce the cost and risk of human lunar exploration while also increasing science achieved. By not having to bring all of the shielding and mission consumables from Earth missions may require less mass to accomplish the same objectives, carry more science equipment, go to more sites of exploration, and/or provide options to recover from failures not possible with delivery of spares and consumables from Earth alone.

The concept of lunar ISRU has been considered and studied for decades, and scientists and engineers were theorizing and even testing concepts for how to extract oxygen from lunar soil even before the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon.

There are four main areas where ISRU can significantly impact how human missions to the Moon will be performed: mission consumable production, civil engineering and construction, energy production, storage and transfer, and manufacturing and repair. The area that has the greatest impact on mission mass, hardware design and selection, and mission architecture is mission consumable production, in particular, the ability to make propellants, life support consumables, and fuel cell reagents. Mission consumable production allows for refueling and reuse of spacecraft, increasing power production and storage, and increased capabilities and failure tolerance for crew life support. The other three areas allow for decreased mission risk due to radiation and plume damage, alternative power systems, and failure recover capabilities while also enabling infrastructure growth over Earth delivered assets.

While lunar ISRU has significant potential for mass, cost, and risk reduction for human lunar missions, it has never been demonstrated before in space. To demonstrate that ISRU can meet mission needs and to increase confidence in incorporating ISRU capabilities into mission architectures, terrestrial laboratory and analog field testing along with robotic precursor missions are required. A stepwise approach with international collaboration is recommended.

The first step is to understand the resources available through orbital and surface exploration missions. Resources of particular interest are hydrogen, hydroxyl, water, and other polar volatile resources recently measured by Chandrayaan-1, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). The second step is to demonstrate critical aspects of ISRU systems to prove ISRU is feasible under lunar environmental and resource conditions (e.g. sub-scale oxygen extraction from regolith). The third step is to perform integrated missions with ISRU and other connected systems, such as power, consumable storage, surface mobility, and life support at a relevant mission scale to demonstrate ISRU capabilities as well as the critical interfaces with other exploration systems. If possible, the mission should demonstrate the use of ISRU products (e.g. in a rocket engine or fuel cell). This ‘dress rehearsal’ mission would be the final step before full implementation of ISRU into human missions, and may be performed during human lunar exploration activities.

This stepwise approach is the most conservative approach, and may only be possible with international cooperation due to the limited number of robotic missions each nation/space agency can perform within their budget.

View the presentation and slides (pdf), HERE.

NASA seeks rover that goes all night

Researchers at the Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania have designed a new lunar rover capable of being both a full scientific research platform and a drilling platform. Designed to operate in wildly changing terrain, drive autonomously in full darkness, and consume very low amounts of power, Scarab was designed from the start for conditions on the moon [TheFutureofThings.com].

Rachel Courtland
New Scientist

A rover that can roam in darkness could win as much as $1.5 million in NASA prize money.

The night rover competition is one of three new "Centennial Challenges" from the agency. NASA hopes it will encourage the development of technology to explore the moon, where a solar-powered robotic explorer may face as much as two weeks of darkness.

"The motivation is energy storage technology for exploration," says Andrew Petro, Centennial Challenge programme manager at NASA in Washington DC. "We're hoping that a range of different technical solutions are brought forward, and we're not assuming it will only be batteries and photovoltaic arrays."

In addition to the night rover prize, NASA plans to offer another $1.5 million for robots that can automatically find and retrieve samples, and a $2 million purse for teams that can place a small satellite into orbit twice in one week.

Read the article, HERE.

Designing a Lunar Rover

Scarab NASA Precursor Robotics notional rover for extremes, like two-week lunar nights, lofty heights and abyssal crater depths. Lunar rovers could be quite different than rovers previously developed for Mars. The Scarab was designed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University to be agile enough to travel over the moon's dusty, rocky surface and also serve as a stable drilling platform in a location where gravity is only one sixth that of Earth. Credit: Carnegie Mellon University

Astrobiology Magazine

Based on a Planetary Science Institute news release

Study Aims to Maximize Scientific Return from Moon Rovers

Researchers are preparing a robotic return to the lunar surface in preparation for future human missions. However, lunar rovers could be quite different than the Mars rovers of past years. The moon is a much different environment than Mars, and robotic explorers on the moon will have different research goals

NASA and other national space agencies are again focused on lunar exploration, which raises the question of how to best use semi-autonomous rovers to explore the moon’s surface.

R. Aileen Yingst, a senior scientist at the Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute, is leading a group of Mars-rover veterans who are conducting field studies to answer that question.

Read the Feature HERE.

Spotlight on Carnegie-Mellon's Scarab Rover

Fresh from a second round of Ground Truth testing on the Island of Hawai'i, CM's Scarab is detailed in a recent report from The Future of Things
Scarab was designed from the start for conditions on the Moon.

The Carnegie Mellon Lunar Rover Initiative put the Scarab through two series of extended tests in 2008. The first took place in Moses Lake, Washington in June and the second in Mauna Kea, Hawaii in October and November. Most of the tests in Washington explored the capabilities of the laser navigation system and the vehicle's mobility. The tests in Hawaii also exercised the navigation systems in a lunar-like terrain filled with volcanic ash. Drawbar tests to examine what happens when forces pull back on the Scarab were also performed as were tests of the velocity camera and drilling system.

From The Future of Things, HERE.