Duration: 12 months
Building large structures in space is a comparatively new endeavor. With the notable exception of the space stations, orbital objects are built on the ground and then sent to space. Since fairings are of limited size, the resulting structure cannot be arbitrarily large; having collapsible/extensible parts can mitigate the problem, but only up to a point. As such, modularity and assemblability is the key aspect behind this new paradigm; to this extent, we propose to study the feasibility of large structure assembly by designing a low-numerosity (i.e. few identical components) set of elemental components (similar to Meccano) which can be assembled using a robot with a low number of degrees of freedom. Said robot shall be able to traverse the structure by leveraging rails built on the components themselves; the structure shall have a geometry compatible with the motion of the robots, i.e. allowing the robot to travel across nodes to links that are 90 degrees from the origin. One other key aspect of this technology is that it allows the components to integrate the electrical distribution system and data-bus within the structure itself. This allows to include embedded sensors within the components, and when assembled, it provides access to power and data from throughout the structure. This essentially makes connecting "functional" modules a much simpler operation. The elements will consist of links and nodes which will be connected via built-in structural/electrical connectors; attention will be given to the problem of thermal/elastic deformation of the structure, by leveraging the proposed aspects. Additional connectors are placed along the structure (not showed in the graphical abstract) which provide mechanical and electrical connection to functional modules, e.g. habitats, battery modules, scientific equipment. We are about to test a prototype of this technology on the ISS (see Background section).
