Honeybee begins work on 5 NASA SBIR Phase 1s
Honeybee Robotics Spacecraft Mechanisms Corporation began work today on its five NASA SBIR Phase 1 grants. The five projects represent several growth areas for Honeybee.
TORC-SP: High Torque, Low Jitter Scissored-Pair CMG Technology
NASA sees an increasing role in the near future for small satellites in the 5-100 kg size range. Currently, small satellite platforms struggle to balance the three critical tasks of collecting enough power, acquiring data and downlinking that data to ground stations. Honeybee Robotics is developing a low cost, high-torque and low-jitter satellite attitude control actuator derived from its Tiny Operationally Responsive CMG (TORC) design.
Extreme Temperature Gearhead
Honeybee Robotics is developing an extreme-temperature-compatible gear head, in response to the need for actuators, particularly gear heads, that can operate in the harsh Venusian environment for extended periods of time. Honeybee will design, build and test a first-generation prototype gear head for Venus-like conditions (486°C temperature and mostly CO2 gas environment). Fully developed and optimized versions of this gear head, when integrated with Honeybee's high temperature motors, could be used to actuate drills, robotic arms, and other devices outside of an environment-controlled landed platform on the surface of Venus.
Arm-Deployed Rotary-Percussive Coring Drill
The continued development of automated sample acquisition and handling tools is critically important to future robotic missions on Mars, the Moon, Venus, and other planetary bodies. In response to the need for a compact, low mass, low power, and low weight-on-bit coring device, Honeybee Robotics proposes to develop an Arm-Deployed Rotary-Percussive Coring Drill. By using a robotic arm to deploy the coring tool into rock or soil targets and stabilize the tool while operating, the coring tool's internal deployment and external stabilization devices can be removed, resulting in a more compact, lower mass device. Adding percussion to the coring tool will reduce average weight-on-bit and energy consumption.
DIHeDRAL: Downhole regolith Interrogation with Helium-assisted DRill And LIBS
Honeybee is developing a fiber-coupled laser-induced breakdown spectrometer (LIBS) system, integrated into a 3m-class drill for true in-situ analysis of subsurface geological samples. By bringing the instrument to the sample, scientists can reduce the limitations of current sampling techniques, namely evaporation of volatile molecules before reaching the instrument, loss of stratigraphic information, sample bias, and cross-contamination.
Prediction Tool for Excavation Tasks for In-Situ Resource Utilization
Honeybee Robotics is developing a software tool for facilitating ISRU excavation system trades in support of selecting an optimal architecture. This will provide engineers with the ability to quickly examine "What if?" scenarios by evaluating a specific excavation architecture's performance in terms relevant metrics, such as total energy used or total duration.
For more information about these or any of Honeybee Robotics current projects, please contact Ellen McDermott at ellen @ honeybeerobotics.com.