Space Apps Challenge 2017

What is Space Mining?

Space mining is the name of whole process which includes finding, extracting and transporting of a raw material from minor planets or asteroids in outer space. It is crucial and mandatory to build space mining systems to prevent Earth from extinction of raw materials.

Why do we need Space Mining?

Earth runs out of raw materials every day. Since there are big number of recycled materials, still it is certain that after a while we will have no raw materials left. For example both antimon which is generally used in medicine and iridium which is used for making LCD screens are have less reserve base less than 10 years. For keep having those materials, we should find them in outer space and take it to the Earth.

Also mining threatens the life on Earth due to pollution and destroying habitats. We need to harvest asteroids and bring them to the Earth. Asteroids have great amount of raw materials such as gold, silver and platinum. Only Ryugu asteroid has $95 billion worth materials like nickel, iron, cobalt etc. It is almost five times GDP of the US.

Problems for Space Mining

There are some problems for Space Mining. These problems need to be solved in order to have system which works proper and without fail. Some of these problems are:

• Determining the asteroid which has raw materials we want
• Exctracting the material
• Supplying the system with any kind of energy
• Reducing the costs of Space Mining
• Time delays
• Landing on Asteroid etc.

First three problems are already solved or about to be solved by other researchers and companies. There is a satellite which is sent to the orbit by Planetary Resources and this satellite searchs for asteroids which has valuable raw materials. Also researchs continue on how to supply such systems.

Our Project comes up with an idea on the last three problems.

Reducing the costs

Due to their characteristics, composites and tasks they are designed for, space systems have to be expensive to conform requirements. Plus this expensiveness, each kilos increase the cost of the mission. For example lemons can cost $2000 for each because of it’s mass’s effect during task.

But the ultimate reducing in cost depends to reusability. The more space rocket goes to the space, the cheaper it gets. Saving increases proportionly with number of flights.

We have designed our system to work as ring shuttle. When rocket is first launched from Earth, it goes directly to the asteroid and leaves the module on it for making module to start harvesting operations. During harvesting rocket stays in the orbit which asteroid follows. When tank is fully filled, rocket communicates with module and gets closer to the asteroid to get tank. Module launchs tank and tank gets locked to the rocket. Once it is locked, rocket starts to go to the Earth to leave tank. When rocket comes to the Low Earth Orbit, it leaves tank and waits for refill. Once it refills and tank is drained the tank locks to the rocket again till it reaches asteroid again.

Time delays

Time delays occur due to the distance between the source and target of the signal and can lead fatal results. For example NASA’s ongoing mission Curiousity on Mars has about 14 minutes of time delayfor one way. It means Control Center gets informed about the situation of Curiousity Rover 14 minutes after. It is clear to say that Control Center can only control Rover 28 minutes after something went wrong. If the case is more dangerous, it can lead to destroying of whole system beacuse half an hour is really big time for urgent situations.

There are two ways to prevent system from time delays: increasing the speed of signal or developing a new method for communication. Since first one is no longer possible, we have designed totally new concept for communicating in space systems.

At present, NASA designs and tests the systems they are going to send to space mission for all possible cases. It means NASA prepares the system and teaches how it should act in urgent cases autonomously instead of being controlled from control center on Earth for preventing the system from time delays. But this approach can only work for one vehicled systems like Curiousity. When it comes to more complex system, which includes more than one autonomous vehicle, it is compulsory to use artifical intelligence and IoT applications to provide optimal and compatible work for each vehicle.

To solve this problem, we have designed a central microcontroller named “MERGEN”. “MERGEN” is responsible from all datas and operations in field. It checks the situation all the time and bridges the digger, collector, transporter and center about location and status each of them. Also “MERGEN” derives a map from collected field datas to have general vision for asteroid and possible cases such as lost vehicle or optimal roads. Plus it’s preloaded error case sets, “MERGEN” learns from previous experiences and generates own optimal solution for possible future errors.

By stepping in situations very close where it occurs, we prevent our system from having time delays. Because operation occurs on asteroid and also this operation is controlled by a fully automatic machine on asteroid so time delay is insignificant due to really less distance.

Landing on Asteroid

Landing back a launched rocket is still difficult even all the requirements (surface or gravity) are provided. If asteroid conditions (distorted surfaces or unknown gravity) added up to this case, it is still almost impossible and risky to make it. The thing gets higher, durability of it gets less. Rockets are thin and high because of their tasks so it makes them not the best option for landing. To get away from any unwanted crashes, it is better to choose landing module wide and short.

While designing a landing system for space operations, the design must work regardless to surface or gravity because these two variables vary in wide ranges. So system should be effective to work well with these two variable.

In our design we have decided to have ring shaped module for landing on asteroid. Its mainly advantages are resistancy, easy control, modularity and fuel saving torque facility. By choosing te module ring shaped it is very resistant and it is really easy to control it because to turn in any direction is amazingly effortless. Also applying even very small forces from the edges makes great impacts on system due to torque it creates. By this way it is possible to save great amount of fuel for future operations.

We believe space mining will be much easier and stable with these 3 solutions we have reached by our design.