College of Engineering Unit:
Our team was tasked with designing a system to return samples from the 16 Psyche asteroid. 16 Psyche is an asteroid in between Jupiter and Mars. This asteroid is believed to be the core of a planetesimal due to its possible high concentration of metal, which makes it very valuable to study planetary development. Our team designed a hypothetical 3 stage mission (impact, collect, and return) to gather and return samples. The impact stage consists of sending an impactor to strike Psyche's surface and bring up a spray of debris. This debris will be collected by a small rocket (drone). This drone will return to a satellite currently orbiting Psyche once the sample collection phase is complete.
The drone design consists of a main body with an antenna and cameras and a sample collection system consisting of a capsule and disk. A double-sided collection disk inside the sample collection capsule will rotate to collect samples at different altitudes. Both sides of the disk consist of a grid-like pattern to hold Aerogel, a lightweight solid used to capture and slow down high-velocity particles. One side of the disk has deeper pockets to hold more Aerogel for collecting large debris particles at a lower orbit. The other side of the disk has shallower Aerogel sections to collect smaller particles at a higher orbit. Please see our other materials for further details.
