Preliminary Design of Mini-Rovers in Swarm Configuration for a Moon In-Situ Resource Utilization Mission

Paper number

IAC-24,A3,IP,158,x90625

Author

Mr. Giuseppe Puleo, University of Naples "Federico II", Italy

Coauthor

Dr. Nunzia Favaloro, CIRA Italian Aerospace Research Centre, Italy

Coauthor

Mr. Gaetano Ippolito, CIRA Italian Aerospace Research Center, Capua, Italy

Coauthor

Prof. Michele Grassi, University of Naples "Federico II", Italy

Year

2024

Abstract

Over the last decade, the growing interest in returning to the Moon is becoming a reality! It encompasses a wide range of goals, driven by private companies, such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Astrobotic and international governments, i.e. the Artemis program is a Moon exploration program that aims to re-establish a human presence on the Moon and to support these operations, several companies and organizations are designing and sending landers and rovers to perform lunar science.\\
In this framework, In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) plays a key role. ISRU is based on harnessing local resources to create products for robotic and human exploration, mandatory to build self-sufficiency for long-term crewed missions. Among the useful consumable products, water, oxygen, minerals and metals can make a substantial impact in terms of space transportation, life support and in-situ buildings.
To accomplish this, lunar resources must be mapped (physically and chemically to define the regolith composition and the resources that could be extracted), collected, transported and processed using chemical reactors and robotic systems, integrated on a wider architecture level.\\
The purpose of this paper is to present the preliminary study of a Moon ISRU mission, developed in the framework of CIRA-UNINA collaboration; it starts with the identification of the objectives and mission requirements. Through them, a detailed analysis was carried out for the selection of the operative site, to identify the area that best matches the mission needs. Afterwards, the focus shifted to robotic systems, and subsystems, preliminary design and finally to the resources mining and utilization strategy. Indeed, identifying resources with specific sensors onboard and enabling resource extraction is a promising application for rover swarms.\\
Different technological solutions can be considered, as the possibilities of realizing a rover system range from size, shape, locomotion system, power system, and payload, concerning the specific operations it must perform. The idea, exposed in the paper, is to design a mission with 4 rovers in a swarm configuration, to explore a wider area, with more, shared and faster information about the soil and regolith consistency than single rovers; this approach increases the overall efficiency of the mission, both in terms of economic and scientific return.\\
The idea of exploiting multiple micro-rovers allows not only to send the entire swarm through a single launch, but above all to perform tasks covering a larger area than a single macro-rover.

Abstract document

IAC-24,A3,IP,158,x90625.brief.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-24,A3,IP,158,x90625.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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