Team Perseverance

Antalya | Virtual Planetary Exploration v2.0

Team Perseverance - Perseverance Sample Collector

High-Level Project Summary

In the future crewed Mars missions, the launch capacity of modern rockets will be lower than a typical Lunar mission. Therefore weight reduction in ground operation systems must be applied.The Perseverance Sample Collector aims to reduce the weight needed to have samples from a foreign celestial body. It further improves the exploring process, making new discoveries easier. The device is made from carbon fiber composite, therefore the structure is incredibly durable and lightweight. Another inspiration for this device is to reduce the amount of risk and the dependancy to autonomous and robotic operations, which is achieved by adding human consideration to the process.

It contains 3 main parts, which are, a rotating segment with retractable blades, main tube and the processor segment.

Processor segment contains 4 electric motors, a processor unit and a 20.000 mAh battery. Tube segment contains the necessary cables and a dedicated area for soil sampling. Lastly, the retractable blade segment contains eight triangle-shaped blades, which fold into a metal lid. The folding system works by rotating and folding back simultaneously. It works by rotating the blades to dig through the soil. Once it's under the soil, it's retracted by a button and compresses the soil sample. It can be reused multiple times throughout the mission span. The processor segment is easily reachable which makes repairs and recharges easier and faster. There are 2 different dedicated buttons which serve different purposes, such as, retracting and rotating the blade segment. We can hold The Perseverance Sample Collector by it's handle. This is crucial for astronaut ergonomics.

Procreate, which was used for the technical blueprint and the visualisation process.

Fusion 360, which was used in rendering and animation process of the final product.

Space Agency Data

We were inspired by the future of spaceflight envisioned by NASA.

The vast amount of equipment that is needed to be brought into different celestial bodies forces us to reduce the amount of weight we carry in future missions. We inspected the data sheets of the rockets that will probably be used in future Lunar and Mars missions, therefore we came into the conclusion that we should aim for weight reduction in vital ground operation devices.

All the data & references we used can be found below in the References part.

Hackathon Journey

Our goal when joining this challenge was gaining experience, improving our abilities as a team and benefiting humankind in It's journey through space.

While developing this, we tried to make a product that is cheap, mass producable and functional.

We would like to thank our school and teachers who provided this opportunity and help to us.