Future Power Solutions for Exploring Hypothesized Surfaces – ASU – C

INSTITUTION

Arizona State University (ASU)

CLASS

Iridium Class (2024 – 2025)

STUDENT TEAM

Johnny Barlag
Zach Smith, Electrical Engineering
Matthew Davis, Electrical Engineering
Brian Sheldon
Ryan Petrutsas

ACADEMIC GUIDANCE

 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The NASA Psyche mission is an orbiter mission to the metal-rich asteroid, Psyche, in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft, which launched in October 2023 and will arrive at the asteroid in mid-2029, will study the asteroid from orbit and will not land on the surface. It is possible to imagine, however, that after learning about Psyche from orbit, there may be scientists and engineers interested in proposing a future mission to explore or sample the surface. Such a mission would need to consider innovative yet feasible solutions for providing power to a surface spacecraft. Using the asteroid’s known and hypothesized environmental and surface conditions, which have been laid out in recent scientific reports (and keeping in mind other constraints such as its gravity, length of day and year, rotation, surface temperature, etc.), the team will design a solution for a potential future mission. Hypothesized surfaces and terrain may include: mostly flat metallic surface, flat metallic with metal and/or rocky debris, rough/high-relief metallic and/or rocky terrain, high-relief metallic crater walls.

 

This work was created in partial fulfillment of the Arizona State University Capstone Course “EEE 488”. The work is a result of the Psyche Student Collaborations component of NASA’s Psyche Mission (https://psyche.asu.edu). “Psyche: A Journey to a Metal World” [Contract number NNM16AA09C] is part of the NASA Discovery Program mission to solar system targets. Trade names and trademarks of ASU and NASA are used in this work for identification only. Their usage does not constitute an official endorsement, either expressed or implied, by Arizona State University or National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of ASU or NASA.