Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Voorhees, C..
The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission will send two 185 kg rovers to Mars in 2003 to continue the scientific community's search for evidence of past water on Mars. These twin robotic vehicles will carry harmonic drives and their performance will be characterized at various temperatures, speeds and loads.
A new six-wheeled robotic roving vehicle was developed for NASA's Exploration Technology (ET) program.
NASA exploration missions to Mars, initiated by the Mars Pathfinder mission in July 1997, will continue over the next decade. The missions require challenging innovations in robot design and improvements in autonomy to meet ambitious objectives under tight budget and time constraints. The authors are developing design tools, component technologies and capabilities to address these needs for manipulation with robots for planetary exploration. The specific developments are: 1) a software analysis tool to reduce robot design iteration cycles and optimize on design solutions, 2) new piezoelectric ultrasonic motors (USM) for light-weight and high torque actuation in planetary environments, 3) use of advanced materials and structures for strong and light-weight robot arms and 4) intelligent camera-image coordinated autonomous control of robot arms for instrument placement and sample acquisition from a rover vehicle.
A system trade study was conducted to determine the feasibility of a 2007 Mars sample return (MSR) mission utilizing the Martian atmosphere for in-situ propellant production (ISPP).
This paper summarizes the design and development of a sub-surface sample acquisition system for use in micro-penetrators.