首页|Designing Mining Robot for Swarm Rover Fleet Carrying Out Water Extraction on the Moon
Designing Mining Robot for Swarm Rover Fleet Carrying Out Water Extraction on the Moon
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NETL
The NASA Planetary Science Program aims to send long-term manned missions to the Moon and Mars， and for this the in-situ resource utilisation (ISRU) concept has been proposed which implies extracting and using resources from asteroids， the Moon and other planets。 Water is an important resource for sustaining long-term manned missions and mining activities on the Moon。 The unpredictability of space mining requires careful development of mining methods and strategies since mining methods used on Earth cannot be applied in space mining directly due to heavy machinery and maintenance issues， as well as because of the characteristics of the space environment。 Application of swarm mining allows to address issues associated with heavy mining machinery。 This paper focuses on designing a rover for mining swarm rover fleet to be used on the Moon for water extraction。 Designing the rover involves identifying the best suited extraction method for the permafrost present in the crates at the poles of the Moon， extracting maximum amount of water from it， maintaining high manoeuvrability and optimal interaction of rovers in the fleet， evaluating their energy consumption and recharge time， as well as their shipment to the Moon as a fleet for swarm mining。 To achieve these design software， and analytical and numerical methods have been applied。 Performance optimisation and cost effectiveness evaluation have been conducted both for the proposed rover and the fleet。 Rovers have been equipped with features to maintain high manoeuvrability both on normal and permafrost regolith。 Cost evaluation has demonstrated the feasibility of using swarm mining on the Moon by employing the proposed rovers。 The outcome from this study can be beneficial for on-Earth mining as well and can help to reduce the environmental footprint of mining。
NETL
