Sample Return from Hypothesized Surfaces – OSU – A
INSTITUTION
Oregon State University (OSU)
CLASS
Iridium Class (2024 – 2025)
STUDENT TEAM
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 return samples from the asteroid to Earth. Designing to the range of hypothesized surfaces and terrain that might be found at Psyche, which have been laid out in recent scientific reports (and keeping in mind other constraints such as its gravity), the team will design a system that could take cached samples and return them to Earth. This might involve delivering the cached samples to another spacecraft in orbit around Psyche or putting them in a vehicle that could make its way directly back to Earth or another solution of the team’s choosing that aligns with their training to date.The team will have to keep in mind the need to design a transport system that would preserve the integrity of the samples coming from the range of hypothesized surface materials of Psyche. 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.