A Crushable Shell for Small Body Landers

Kurzfassung

Last year, the DLR built Mobil Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) decoupled from the Hayabusa-2 spacecraft and performed surface science at the asteroid (162173) Ryugu. The MASCOT lander itself didn’t need a dedicated damping system for its touchdown since the impact velocity was very low in the range of a few cm/s. This was due to the relatively small size (D = 900m) and hence low gravitational pull of the target asteroid. In a next step, DLR is developing further nano lander technologies for larger celestial bodies with respectively higher surface gravity and therefore higher impact velocities. Previous investigations have shown that for larger bodies, the landing velocity is in the range of 4 m/s which produces high shock loads. A possible low complex and lightweight solution of damping the shocks is the use of a crushable shell around the lander. This crushable shell could be made out of aluminum honeycomb core with a high-performance polyethylene cover sheet. The idea is to convert the kinetic energy into deformation work of the shell and reduce the shock load to the instrument platform. The design is particularly advantageous since no moving parts or other mechanisms are required, thus making the system very robust and fail safe. This paper concentrates on a hardware test campaign recently done at DLR’s Landing and Mobility Test Facility (LAMA). It will show the design of the shell, the test setup and the results of the campaign.