Isolation cones
January 28, 2009
Isolation cones Components must be mounted inside the rover chassis, but cannot tolerate the oven-like heat of the belly pan. The belly pan faces down onto the illuminated lunar surface. Heat-sensitive components are not mounted directly to the belly pan. They are isolated by mounting on standoff cones that maintain a gap between the components and the hot surface. Attempts to fabricate these cones from composites failed, due to the tight, complex curves. Fabrication from aluminum succeeded. From AstroboticBlogPhotos Read More →
Heater
January 23, 2009
Heater During cruise, thermal concern is primarily keeping propulsion, battery and avionics warm enough for landing. Resistive heaters do the job. From AstroboticBlogPhotos Read More →
Pyramidal arrays
January 13, 2009
Pyramidal arrays The pyramidal solar arrays deliver power under all sun incidence angles without actuation for deployment or actuation for pointing. The structural shell radiates for cooling and tapers to fit the cone of the launch vehicle fairing. From AstroboticBlogPhotos Read More →
40 years ago today
January 9, 2009
40 years ago today. On January 9, 1968, Surveyor 7 made a soft-landing on the moon, marking the end of the American series of unmanned explorations of the lunar surface. Here is a video of that mission: click here to see video Read More →
Air & Space Magazine on GLXP
January 1, 2009
Air & Space Magazine on GLXP. Air & Space’s GLXP profile hit newsstands today. The phenomenal images in the hardcopy version are worth the buy. The teaser on the magazine cover reads “The Next Moon Race - Robot Division”. Text version is online at http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/Red–The-Robots.html First-tier magazines take the story to new audience, and tell the story with depth and quality not possible with most reporting. A lot of backgrounding, writing, photography, editing and production went into this. Thanks and kudos to Smithsonian’s... [Read more]
