Session

Poster Session 2

Abstract

This paper presents a mission concept in which a rope or a net is used to grapple onto a low-gravity body of interest. The net doubles as infrastructure for a network of tiny crawlers that move across the net’s surface primarily for applications in in-situ distributed sensing. As an initial application area, we consider deploying a network of distributed spectrometers across the surface of an asteroid for high spatial resolution material characterization. We present a first prototype for a rope crawling mechanism as well as a study of a new-to-market chip-sized spectroscope as a candidate sensing payload for the crawlers. Some evidence is found for the sensor’s ability to discriminate between high-iron and low-iron meteorite samples.

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Aug 9th, 9:45 AM

Space Webs as Infrastructure for Crawling Sensors on Low Gravity Bodies

This paper presents a mission concept in which a rope or a net is used to grapple onto a low-gravity body of interest. The net doubles as infrastructure for a network of tiny crawlers that move across the net’s surface primarily for applications in in-situ distributed sensing. As an initial application area, we consider deploying a network of distributed spectrometers across the surface of an asteroid for high spatial resolution material characterization. We present a first prototype for a rope crawling mechanism as well as a study of a new-to-market chip-sized spectroscope as a candidate sensing payload for the crawlers. Some evidence is found for the sensor’s ability to discriminate between high-iron and low-iron meteorite samples.