Additive Manufacturing with Hypothesized Surface Materials – Asteroid Regolith Refinement

INSTITUTION

University of Georgia (UGA)

CLASS

Iridium Class (2024 – 2025)

STUDENT TEAM

ACADEMIC GUIDANCE

Professor Kevin Wu, UGA

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

This project designed and tested a regolith refinement system that could provide usable feedstock to a potential additive manufacturing device on the M-type asteroid Psyche, using the hypothesized surface materials. The team investigated stakeholders, identified design needs, and generated engineering constraints to being the design of their solution. The team generated concepts for all aspects of the asteroid-based additive manufacturing process, identified advantages and disadvantages of each, investigated competitors, and ultimately selected to pursue a regolith refinement system. The team iterated on multiple CAD models of the crushing system, assessing each iteration with simulations, data analysis, FMEAs, and considerations of design criteria, manufacturing, and human factors, Simulations were made accurate through the application of surface material aspects gleaned from NASA research documents. The final design is a refinement system that maintains consistent particle flow and refines hypothesized Psyche regolith into feedstock for a hypothetical vapor-deposition system. The team is providing the client with the iteration CAD models, detailed engineering drawings, a budget, and the particle flow and breakage simulations and results.

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This work was created in partial fulfillment of the University of Georgia Capstone Course “MCHE 4910”. The work is a result of the Psyche Student Collaborations component of NASA’s Psyche Mission (https://psyche.ssl.berkeley.edu). “Psyche: A Journey to a Metal World” [Contract number NNM16AA09C] is part of the NASA Discovery Program mission to solar system targets. Trade names and trademarks of ASU and NASA are used in this work for identification only. Their usage does not constitute an official endorsement, either expressed or implied, by Arizona State University or National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of ASU or NASA.