Astrolab Collaborates with Student Teams for ISRU Design Projects
Two student teams at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and the University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez (UPRM) developed FLEX-centric In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) payloads and mission concepts for the Moon and Mars.
Building The Future Today
Creating a sustained human presence on the Moon and, eventually, Mars will require various activities, including collection, processing, and storage of resources, site preparation, and construction. We’ve developed our FLEX rover to enable these In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) operations by transporting, powering, and deploying these systems. In addition, our lander-agnostic approach allows us to partner with multiple small- to large-scale landers and architectures. Now to begin preparing ourselves for these near-future partnerships with industry and academia, we have published a Payload Interface Guide that anyone can use to develop systems compatible with our terrestrial rover prototype. Two premier examples of these collaborations are the ISRU student design projects by undergraduate teams at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and the University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez (UPRM).
Adaptive Regolith Excavation System
The UCSB team was composed of six mechanical engineers and one geophysical science major. The team was led by our Summer 2021 Zed Factor Fellow, Abed Musaffar, who recalls that at the time of his internship, our team took notice of a NASA-sponsored university competition that asks students to design, build, and test a Lunar regolith excavator system. He saw this as an opportunity to pitch the idea of having the company sponsor and mentor a senior design project led by him at his school. We thought this was a great idea and the UCSB team quickly began researching ideas and conceptualizing their Adaptive Regolith Excavation System (ARES) project.
The UCSB team and their mentors pose with FLEX and the ARES payload.
ARES builds upon previous regolith excavators designed by NASA and other members of industry and academia. But what makes ARES different is the first-of-its-kind steel excavating drum design. According to Abed, this system consists of three sub-drums with radially dispersed excavation tips that allow ARES to excavate, store, transport, and deposit regolith. “[The] key features of ARES are a minimal excavation force, the ability to store and transport over 200 kg of regolith at once, and the ability to excavate at a rate of over 1800 kg/hr. Most importantly, ARES is able to leverage FLEX’s unique capabilities to provide an incredibly competitive and full featured Lunar regolith excavation system,” Abed continued.
The UCSB team and Karl Buchka work on ARES.
Most of the manufacturing of ARES took place in the UCSB machine shop and was done mainly by the students. A machinist was brought into the project to assist the students in the making of more complex metal pieces. Likewise, Karl Buchka, our avionics lead, helped the students design the control system for ARES. The team performed on-campus tests of the electrical and mechanical systems of the payload before transporting it to our HQ in Hawthorne for a full day of testing.
The students and our team deployed FLEX with ARES in our test yard in the back of the HQ, thus beginning three rounds of testing. The main objective of this demonstration was to study the length of the strip excavated, the depth of the strip at several points, the time required to excavate, and the final volume of material excavated. After evaluating the data, the team validated their theoretical models and concluded that the system exceeded its target specifications.
ARES excavates basalt in our test yard.
This project gave the students first-hand experience of engineering design and its challenges including familiarizing themselves with intricate electrical systems, selecting components, dealing with lead times, and coming up with a feasible and innovative yet economically viable design. On the other hand, it also taught us what it was like to work with a group to develop and integrate a payload with FLEX. At the end of the 2021-2022 school year, the ARES project was rewarded with the Most Innovative Design in Mechanical Engineering Award in the Mechanical Engineering Department at UCSB. Furthermore, their work was presented on their behalf by their mentor and Astrolab team member, Andrew Welter, at the Space Resources conference.
Martian Architecture for Propellant Production and Exploration Research
Similarly, the UPRM project came about after our former Fall 2021 Zed Factor Fellow, Wilbert Ruperto-Hernández, saw the opportunity to integrate FLEX into his team’s mission concept design for a Mars Water-based ISRU Architecture for the NASA Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkages (RASC-AL) Student Design Competition. The competition asked students to design the extraction and chemical processing systems that would convert the water-ice from the subsurface and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into 50 metric tons of propellant per year for future vehicles on the red planet. The Martian Architecture for Propellant Production and Exploration Research (MAPPER) team was composed of over 30 students from various science and engineering fields, from mechanical and chemical engineering to geology and microbiology.
The MAPPER team pose in front of UPRM’s iconic "El Pórtico" structure for their official group picture.
The team began by studying previous propellant production architectures and identifying possible chemical processes and end products. The team concluded that the propellant production would focus on liquid methane and liquid oxygen, which were to be produced via the Sabatier and electrolysis reactions inside a chemical plant. At the same time, the team decided that a Rodwell (Rodríguez well) system was to be used to extract the subsurface water-ice. However, to make this architecture design possible, it required off-loading, transporting, and deploying multiple systems, including Fission Surface Power (FSP) reactors, power cables, inflatable tanks for long-term storage, and 3D printers for construction, among others.
Concept of Operations of MAPPER.
Knowing about FLEX’s capabilities, Wilbert immediately understood that the rover could fulfill the job of deploying and running part of the ISRU operations on Mars. “The modularity that FLEX provides with its multiple payload interfaces and configurations gave us a tremendous capability to design systems that, while still in their conceptual phase, are adhering to existing hardware such as this vehicle. Much of the ISRU systems sizing is a big unknown, but we managed to design a host of systems that conform to the vehicle payload volume and our design calculations,” he added.
For instance, FLEX would be in charge of the propellant transfer process in this mission concept. Such a process begins with the rover picking up an empty and deflated tank, transporting and docking it to the chemical plant, and finally installing it into a power grid where it would remain for months or years until a vehicle needs the propellants. Furthermore, FLEX also works as a precursor science and pre-mission planning asset that would help assess the presence, distribution, and characteristics of water-ice reserves on the red planet.
FLEX transports and docks inflatable tanks to the ISRU plant for propellant transfer.
In June of this year, the MAPPER team traveled to Cocoa Beach, Florida, to present and defend their project in front of a panel of NASA and industry experts in human and robotic space exploration during the 2022 RASC-AL forum. In this culmination of a 10-month design process, the students received feedback from the judges and networked with 14 other teams with top engineering schools in the United States.
The MAPPER team after successfully presenting their project at the 2022 NASA RASC-AL forum.
Through student collaborations like this, Astrolab is gathering new ideas to help envision our company’s future on the Moon and Mars while providing students with a multi-purpose platform to augment their space exploration design projects.
Have an idea for a payload and want to know how to develop and test it quickly? Check out our Payload Interface Guide for the FLEX terrestrial prototype to find out we can help make your idea a reality. Contact [email protected] for this and other inquiries about the company’s services and capabilities.