A Robotic Sensor Node for Mechanical Property Detection of Material on Asteroid Surface

In recent years, asteroid exploration has attracted increasing attention from research institutes. One of the main tasks in the exploration is to acquire the material composition and mechanical property on the surface of the planets. This paper proposes an impacting based material composition and mechanical property detection method with a new kind of robotic sensor nodes. The sensor nodes have a cylindrical body and a conical head. During landing, the spacecraft launches the sensor nodes with a high speed to the surface of the asteroid. The sensor nodes impact the surface and record the vibration information with an accelerometer. We also used the sample entropy and detrended fluctuation analysis algorithms to obtain two characteristics of the signal. Then, the cluster analysis method was employed for vibration signal processing to determine the material composition and mechanical property on the surface of asteroids. We conducted experiments to validate the proposed method. The results of this paper can provide guidance for design of a detector for assisting of landing, anchoring, and sampling on asteroids to reduce the risks and increase the probability of success in these operations.

[1]  Zebulon C. Scoville,et al.  Extravehicular Activity Asteroid Exploration and Sample Collection Capability , 2014 .

[2]  F. Scholten,et al.  The landing(s) of Philae and inferences about comet surface mechanical properties , 2015, Science.

[3]  Daniel J. Scheeres,et al.  Surface Gravity Fields for Asteroids and Comets , 2013 .

[4]  Colin R. McInnes,et al.  Usage of asteroid resources for space-based geoengineering , 2013 .

[5]  Gary B. Hughes,et al.  Directed energy missions for planetary defense , 2016, 1604.03511.

[6]  Kenji Nagaoka,et al.  Experimental evaluation of gripping characteristics based on frictional theory for ground grip locomotive robot on an asteroid , 2015, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).

[7]  Aiguo Song,et al.  Modeling and experimental validation of sawing based lander anchoring and sampling methods for asteroid exploration , 2018 .

[8]  Richard P. Binzel,et al.  Asteroid (16) Psyche: The Science of Visiting a Metal World , 2016 .

[9]  Aiguo Song,et al.  Force modeling of the cutting disc in rock sawing for anchoring and sampling in asteroid exploration , 2017, 2017 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO).

[10]  David Morrison,et al.  Impacts on the Earth by asteroids and comets: assessing the hazard , 1994, Nature.

[11]  Aiguo Song,et al.  Sampling head–rock contact identification for regolith sampling in space , 2013 .

[12]  N Desai Prasun,et al.  Sample Returns Missions in the Coming Decade , 2000 .

[13]  Daniel M. Helmick,et al.  Small body surface mobility with a limbed robot , 2014, 2014 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[14]  Kazuhisa Fujita,et al.  Trajectory Estimation of the Hayabusa Spacecraft During Atmospheric Disintegration , 2013 .

[15]  Y. Tsuda,et al.  System design of the Hayabusa 2—Asteroid sample return mission to 1999 JU3 , 2013 .

[16]  Larry Denneau,et al.  Detection of Earth-impacting asteroids with the next generation all-sky surveys , 2009, 0905.3685.

[17]  S. Debei,et al.  The morphological diversity of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko , 2015, Science.

[18]  Hans Rickman,et al.  Determining the geotechnical properties of planetary regolith using Low Velocity Penetrometers , 2014 .

[19]  M. K. Crombie,et al.  The Unexpected Surface of Asteroid (101955) Bennu , 2019, Nature.

[20]  Larry H. Matthies,et al.  Crater detection for autonomous landing on asteroids , 2001, Image Vis. Comput..

[21]  D Tiphene,et al.  The Surface Composition and Temperature of Asteroid 21 Lutetia As Observed by Rosetta/VIRTIS , 2011, Science.

[22]  X. Ruan,et al.  Optimal site selection for soft landing on asteroid , 2014, The 26th Chinese Control and Decision Conference (2014 CCDC).

[23]  Guangyou Fang,et al.  Volcanic history of the Imbrium basin: A close-up view from the lunar rover Yutu , 2015, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[24]  Roberto Furfaro,et al.  Asteroid Precision Landing via Multiple Sliding Surfaces Guidance Techniques , 2013 .

[25]  David E. Smith,et al.  Analysis of laser radar measurements of the asteroid 433 Eros , 2001, SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing.

[26]  Stephan Ulamec,et al.  Landing Strategies for Small Bodies Missions - Philae and beyond , 2009 .

[27]  William E. Sharp,et al.  Optimization of space borne imaging ladar sensor for asteroid studies using parameter design , 2002, SPIE Optics + Photonics.

[28]  M. Shepard,et al.  Near-Earth asteroid surface roughness depends on compositional class , 2008 .

[29]  R. Jaumann,et al.  The geomorphology, color, and thermal properties of Ryugu: Implications for parent-body processes , 2019, Science.

[30]  Zuber,et al.  The shape of 433 eros from the NEAR-shoemaker laser rangefinder , 2000, Science.

[31]  M. Rollins,et al.  Evaluation of Existing Electric Propulsion Systems for the OSIRIS-REx Mission , 2013 .

[32]  M. Yamada,et al.  The surface composition of asteroid 162173 Ryugu from Hayabusa2 near-infrared spectroscopy , 2019, Science.

[33]  Günter Kargl,et al.  Using the anchoring device of a comet lander to determine surface mechanical properties , 1997 .

[34]  D. Scheeres,et al.  Exterior gravitation of a polyhedron derived and compared with harmonic and mascon gravitation representations of asteroid 4769 Castalia , 1996 .

[35]  Kris Zacny,et al.  Asteroids: Anchoring and Sample Acquisition Approaches in Support of Science, Exploration, and In situ Resource Utilization , 2013 .

[36]  Gary B. Hughes,et al.  Directed energy planetary defense , 2013, 2015 IEEE Aerospace Conference.

[37]  Eric Hand,et al.  Planetary Science. Philae probe makes bumpy touchdown on a comet. , 2014, Science.