MIT Engineers Test an Idea for a New Hovering Moon Rover

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Levitating Rover

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MIT aerospace engineers are evaluating an idea for a hovering rover that levitates by utilizing the moon’s natural charge. This illustration reveals an idea picture of rover. Credit: Courtesy of the scientists

A levitating car may sooner or later check out the moon, asteroids, and other airless planetary surface areas.

Aerospace engineers at MIT are evaluating a brand-new principle for a hovering rover that levitates by utilizing the moon’s natural charge.

Because they do not have an environment, the moon and other airless bodies such as asteroids can develop an electrical field through direct exposure to the sun and surrounding plasma On the moon, this surface area charge is strong enough to levitate dust more than 1 meter in the air, much the method fixed electrical power can trigger an individual’s hair to stand on end.

Engineers at NASA and somewhere else have actually just recently proposed utilizing this natural surface area charge to levitate a glider with wings made from Mylar, a product that naturally holds the exact same charge as surface areas on airless bodies. They reasoned that the likewise charged surface areas must fend off each other, with a force that lofts the glider off the ground. But such a style would likely be restricted to little asteroids, as bigger planetary bodies would have a more powerful, neutralizing gravitational pull.

The MIT group’s levitating rover might possibly navigate this size constraint. The principle, which looks like a retro-style, disc-shaped flying dish, utilizes small ion beams to both charge up the car and enhance the surface area’s natural charge. The general result is created to produce a reasonably big repulsive force in between the car and the ground, in such a way that needs extremely little power. In a preliminary expediency research study, the scientists reveal that such an ion increase must be strong enough to levitate a little, 2-pound car on the moon and big asteroids like Psyche.

Hovering Rover Test Setup

This image reveals the diagram of the test setup. The style utilizes small ion beams to charge up the car and the surface area beneath, with little power required. Such an ion increase might be strong enough to levitate a 2-pound car on the moon and big asteroids. Credit: Courtesy of the scientists

“We think of using this like the Hayabusa missions that were launched by the Japanese space agency,” states lead author Oliver Jia-Richards, a college student in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics andAstronautics “That spacecraft operated around a small asteroid and deployed small rovers to its surface. Similarly, we think a future mission could send out small hovering rovers to explore the surface of the moon and other asteroids.”

The group’s outcomes appear in the present concern of the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets Jia-Richards’ co-authors are Paulo Lozano, the M. Alem án-Velasco Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and director of MIT’s Space Propulsion Lab; and previous checking out trainee Sebastian Hampl, now at McGill University.

Ionic force

The group’s levitating style depends on making use of mini ion thrusters, called ionic-liquid ion sources. These little, microfabricated nozzles are linked to a tank including ionic liquid in the type of room-temperature molten salt. When a voltage is used, the liquid’s ions are charged and discharged as a beam through the nozzles with a particular force.

Lozano’s group has actually originated the advancement of ionic thrusters and has actually utilized them generally to move and physically maneuver little satellites in area. Recently, Lozano had actually seen research study revealing the levitating result of the moon’s charged surface area on lunar dust. He likewise thought about the electrostatic glider style by NASA and questioned: Could a rover fitted with ion thrusters produce adequate repulsive, electrostatic force to hover on the moon and bigger asteroids?

To test the concept, the group at first designed a little, disk-shaped rover with ion thrusters that charged up the car alone. They designed the thrusters to beam adversely charged ions out of the car, which efficiently provided the car a favorable charge, comparable to the moon’s favorably charged surface area. But they discovered this was insufficient to get the car off the ground.

“Then we thought, what if we transfer our own charge to the surface to supplement its natural charge?” Jia-Richards states.

By pointing extra thrusters at the ground and beaming out favorable ions to magnify the surface area’s charge, the group reasoned that the increase might produce a larger force versus the rover, enough to levitate it off the ground. They prepared an easy mathematical design for the circumstance and discovered that, in concept, it might work.

Based on this basic design, the group anticipated that a little rover, weighing about 2 pounds, might accomplish levitation of about one centimeter off the ground, on a big asteroid such as Psyche, utilizing a 10- kilovolt ion source. To get a comparable liftoff on the moon, the exact same rover would require a 50- kilovolt source.

“This kind of ionic design uses very little power to generate a lot of voltage,” Lozano describes. “The power needed is so small, you could do this almost for free.”

In suspension

To make certain the design represented what might occur in a genuine environment in area, they ran an easy circumstance in Lozano’s laboratory. The scientists made a little hexagonal test car weighing about 60 grams and determining about the size of an individual’s palm. They set up one ion thruster punctuating, and 4 pointing down, and after that suspended the car over an aluminum surface area from 2 springs adjusted to combat Earth’s gravitational force. The whole setup was positioned within a vacuum chamber to mimic the airless environment of the moon and asteroids.

The scientists likewise suspended a tungsten rod from the experiment’s springs, and utilized its displacement to determine just how much force the thrusters produced each time they were fired. They used different voltages to the thrusters and determined the resulting forces, which they then utilized to determine the height the car alone might have levitated. They discovered these speculative outcomes matched with forecasts of the exact same circumstance from their design, providing self-confidence that its forecasts for hovering a rover on Psyche and the moon were reasonable.

The present design is created to forecast the conditions needed to just accomplish levitatation, which took place to be about 1 centimeter off the ground for a 2-pound car. The ion thrusters might produce more force with bigger voltage to raise an automobile greater off the ground. But Jia-Richards states the design would require modifying, as it does not represent how the discharged ions would act at greater elevations.

“In principle, with better modeling, we could levitate to much higher heights,” he states.

In that case, Lozano states future objectives to the moon and asteroids might release rovers that utilize ion thrusters to securely hover and steer over unidentified, unequal surface.

“With a levitating rover, you don’t have to worry about wheels or moving parts,” Lozano states. “An asteroid’s terrain could be totally uneven, and as long as you had a controlled mechanism to keep your rover floating, then you could go over very rough, unexplored terrain, without having to dodge the asteroid physically.”

Reference: “Electrostatic Levitation on Atmosphere-Less Planetary Bodies with Ionic-Liquid Ion Sources” by Oliver Jia-Richards, Sebastian K. Hampl and Paulo C. Lozano, 31 March 2021, Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets
DOI: 10.2514/ 1. A35001

This research study was supported, in part, by NASA.