Hello Users,
We have some exciting news! IPL is hiring! Please apply at our at the link below!
We will continue to have our regular hours at Sun Devil Hall (see map for more instructions to the lab). Lab Open: 10 am to 5 pm M-F
Make sure to sign up for our mailing list to get the most up-to-date information. Hope to see you in the lab! Join the mailing list
Best, Genevieve Cooper
Head of Student Programs
Interplanetary Laboratory
Hello All,
Happy New Year and we hope the first day of classes went well! We wanted to share a few updates about the Interplanetary Lab on campus.
We will continue to have our regular hours at Sun Devil Hall (see map for more instructions to the lab). Lab Open: 10 am to 5 pm M-F Dev Hours: Wednesday 4:30pm - 6pm. (Workshops beginning at 4:30).
This semester, we will be hosting Dev Hours on Wednesday nights with a variety of personal development and engineering workshops. Our first talk will be this Wednesday by Chandler Hutchens and Christopher McCormick, where they will introduce you to the lab and what we do here followed by a tour!
Here are the highlights for Fall 2022 in case you missed it! LightCube Delivery and Launch - Dec 12
ASCEND ballooning launch - Nov 19th
Passport to ASU
and these are just to name a few! We will see you all at our later events in the upcoming semester. Check out our website to see what other projects we are working on at https://interplanetarylab.github.io/ !
Best, Genevieve Cooper
Head of Student Programs Interplanetary Laboratory Arizona State University email: gcooper7796@gmail.com web: interplanetary.asu.edu
Joe DuBois and Chandler Hutchens November 14, 2022
Goal: With orbital crowding of aging technology, a cost-effective and time-efficient mechanism for repairing and altering current on-orbit assets is needed. ROAMER will provide an exploratory orbiting microsat capable of maintenance tasks, repairs, and service to orbital assets. The use of a refillable water thruster (ThermaSat) and the small vehicle size provide safety by design for use near inhabited space stations. Further, ROAMER will be capable of orbit changes and plane changes between space stations for multimission maintenance tasks.
Partners: Howe Industries https://www.howeindustries.net/ in support of a Space Force STTR.
Interplanetary Laboratory key contributions: We created a System Engineering Report for the spacecraft portion of this project. For the study we developed a list of currently available components and conducted power, mass, volume and operations analysis. We also developed a 3D printed model to assess manufacturability, integration and handling.
Figure 1: ROAMER 3D Printed (1/3 version)
Figure 2: ROAMER 3D Rendering
Figure 3: ROAMER 3D CAD
Ashley Lepham November 8, 2022
CHARLOTTE (Crater Hydrogen and Regolith Laboratory on Technical Terrain Environments) is a 6-legged rover developed by ASU students at the Luminosity Lab as a part of one of NASA’s BIG Idea Challenges – Extreme Terrain Mobility Challenge. The Interplanetary Lab provided both engineering and environmental testing support for the Luminosity team. From June to October 2022, the Interplanetary Lab accomplished four major tasks for CHARLOTTE: 1) the design and construction a lunar sandbox capable of imitating lunar gravity and containing lunar regolith simulant to test CHARLOTTE’s traction and dust ingress, 2) the design and construction of a structure to conduct abrasion testing on CHARLOTTE’s Medium Voltage Direct Current (MVDC) cable, 3) thermal cycling tests on CHARLOTTE’s carapace, 1 DOF leg, and 3 DOF leg, and 4) TVAC testing for CHARLOTTE’s feet, radiator, and MVDC cable. The results of these experiments were included in CHARLOTTE’s final report, which was submitted to NASA’s BIG Idea Challenge. The lunar sandbox, while also expanding the lab’s environmental testing capabilities, is also being developed as an outreach piece, where the public will be able to control a RC car in the sandbox, as though they were driving on the lunar surface. This project is currently being worked on by a capstone group.
Figure 1. CHARLOTTE in gravity harness in the lunar sandbox.
Figure 2. The test set-up for abrasion testing on the MVDC cable.
Figure 3. Thermal cycling set-up of the 3 DOF leg
Figure 4. TVAC testing set-up of the MVDC cable.
