Deployment of Cabling on Hypothesized Surfaces – Deployment Lander

INSTITUTION

Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU)

CLASS

Platinum Class (2025 – 2026)

STUDENT TEAM

Erwin Carter, Mechanical Engineering

Quinn Fuller, Mechanical Engineering

Kenneth Hernandez, Mechanical Engineering

ACADEMIC GUIDANCE

Frank Gulla, Professor of the Practice, Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The NASA Psyche Cable Deployment Missionaims to hypothesize a design to deploy atelescope array on the surface of an asteroid. The telescope array requires a network of cables with a total length of 4 kilometers. The missionrequires a device that will deploy 41-kilometer sections of cable in the 4 cardinal directions.

This work was created in partial fulfillment of the Virginia Commonwealth University Capstone Course “ENGR 402”, “EGMN 402”, and “MNE 521.” 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.