Emissicius & Stradivarius Asteroid Survey Ship by tommy99osullivan

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

As part of a project that I did recently I designed an asteroidal survey craft called the Emissicius. It will be accompanied by a SoLTeC (Solar Laser Transducer Craft, which flies alongside the ship and beams power over.). The first part of the operation consists of an asteroid survey ship which flies out before the actual mining rig flies out. This ship will also carry a Stradivarius sonic jackhammer, which is an original idea of mine.

The front mounted Stradivarius undocks from the mothercraft and flies to the surface where four large screws will embed it into the asteroid. It’s first mission is to find the asteroid’s composition. Once secured it transmits a series of sonic waves through the asteroid by means of a pressurised speaker bag in very close contact with the surface. It works under the same principle as an impactor probe, by firing sonic waves through the asteroid, seismic detectors and microphones can make an internal structure map, showing the entire makeup of the asteroid (similar to sonar), showing the weaker areas, the stronger areas, the internal structure, the topography and all the materials the asteroid is composed of and where they are positioned in the asteroid.

The second part of the ship, is the ship’s computers, batteries and instruments bay. This area holds the cameras to look at the asteroid’s surface and also to find flat areas for landing. This area also has a laser, to carve out landing areas, should they be unavailable. They can also be used to vaporise the surface regolith so that spectrometers can see the makeup of the asteroid regolith from above.

Also in the instruments bay is a landing craft, that will carry down the microphones to the surface. This drop ship (shown above), is about forty centimetres in height with a radius of the lander base at about 30 centimetres in diameter. This lander goes down to the asteroid and allows the microphones to magnetise and drive around on the surface.

The actual rollers themselves which will operate on the surface, will only work on ferrous asteroids. They receive power from one of the nearby SoLTeCs which power the mining operation. Each of these is about the size of an average iPhone, they have two screw like wheels which will rotate to drive it forward, backward and counterrotate to let it turn in 360°. When they are positioned correctly, a pair of pitons will dig into the surface of the asteroid, attaching the rover to the asteroid. When it is dug in, the wheels will demagnetise as not to interfere with the microphone. They have a drop down microphone which (when the rover is in position) will lower down to the surface and listen for the Stradivarius to output it’s sound pulse.

Once the microphones are in place, and their screws are down. The Stradivarius will let off a series of sound pulses. These pulses will map the internal structure of the asteroid and find the weak areas in the structure. This process will continue for days until the next part of the process can begin

However, since the magnets only work on ferrous asteroids, these microphones can also be dropped as a huge net which is placed on the asteroid as opposed to this rover design.