NASA scientists have built a dynamic little spacecraft in record
time. It may someday rendezvous with asteroids, orbit Earth or Mars,
and landon the moon -- for roughly one tenth the price of a
conventional unmanned mission.
"This spacecraft will allow NASA to launch more missions, for less
money," says William Marshall, a member of the team that built the
satellite. "In the 1960's landing on the Moon took a team of thousands
of people. Today that same task can be done with 30."
The new vehicle is designed around what Marshall's team calls a
Modular Common Spacecraft Bus. It has a versatile octagonal box shape
that can carry up to fifty kilograms of instruments so long as they can
fit within the space that sits atop the engine.
Reusable spacecraft architecture is a bit of a novelty for NASA,
which has traditionally built spacecraft from the ground up for each
new mission -- at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. By using a
modular platform, NASA will no longer need to to reinvent the wheel
again and again -- further reducing design costs.
Right now, the fourteen researchers are testing a prototype that is
propelled by compressed air cylinders -- actually repurposed SCUBA
tanks -- instead of a classic fuel and oxygen rocket. By using cold
gas, the team can perform an indoor flight test every forty minutes,
instead of having to wait several weeks or months between tests, as
they would with rocket fueled engines. The compressed air propulsion
system only allows the craft to hover for six or seven seconds, but
that is more than enough time for the scientists to work out kinks in
the design. When they switch to a conventional engine, most the flight
control software will be nearly flawless.
Marshall says that it was not easy to get NASA headquarters to
believe in their project. His supervisor, Alan Weston, turned to
General Pete Worden, the director of Ames Research Center, who offered
them $4 million in internal funding to get the project started. Using
that money, the small team designed and built a working prototype in
fifteen months.
When high-ranking NASA officials saw a flight test, they were impressed enough to include the team in an $80 million dollar mission to the moon. In that role, it will be called the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer.
"The progress that the NASA team is making on fast-development,
low-cost planetary spacecraft shows we still have the right stuff,"
says Worden.
To see a video of the hovercraft being tested, go to this link:
https://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1815813330?bctid=9486034001
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