Although in many areas the ingenuity Argentine is a classicnow another category has just been added: innovative space developments: a team of brand-new aerospace engineers from the National University of La Plata (UNLP), has just been awarded in an international competition held in Dubai.
The group received second place in the #T-TeC Award 2021a contest that aims to promote space technological innovation and is sponsored by the Italian company Telespazio. What idea did the organizers reward with 6,000 euros and diplomas? A new concept that seeks to develop a small space vehicle that will be capable of land intact a load little on the lunar surface, at a very low economic cost and safely. What is original is that to comply with this slogan, the Argentines appealed to a design idea that, although it is already fifty years old since its conception, only recently began to be considered for practical uses: the Tensegrity.
“We achieved second place in the contest thanks to the concept that we have been developing for a couple of years and that we baptized Pulqui XXI”, he told NEWS Franco Ruffini, one of the coordinators of the project that surpassed the proposals of 70 researchers from science, technology and engineering careers from 22 universities in nine countries, including some prominent ones from countries such as Italy, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. As expanded Thomas Boschetto -another of the members- “our project encompasses the complete design of a space vehicle of reduced dimensions and weight, but that is capable of achieving a controlled landing on the lunar surface, leaving an intact payload there, safely and – above all – economic”.
In simple definition requires details. The third team coordinator –Facundo Gavino– clarified: “small because we operate under the standards of the CubeSat (see box). This is that the vehicle will be cube-shaped, 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters and a height of 36 centimeters and that in total it will weigh 6.3 kilograms. This elongated metal cube contains inside the fuel and the integrated control and propulsion system whose main purpose is to almost completely “brake” the vehicle from lunar orbit until it is less than 100 meters high. On its upper face it carries the Useful load, which can be sensors, gauges, or other scientific instruments.
But what is really original and the heart of the idea of Pulqui XXIis the system that protects that cargo bound for the Moon: it is a “tensegrityIn Ruffini’s words, tensegrity is a type of structure made up of bars and cables -in its case aluminum- which, due to their shape and design, are capable of absorb high impact stresses and function as a kind of airbag, but in a simpler and more efficient way.
“Our Pulqui XXI begins to work when the mission that seeks to put a payload in a lunar crater or valley It reaches about 100 kilometers from the surface of our satellite. At that moment, Pulqui separates from the vector that transported it from Earth and does its job of descending in a controlled manner, although at a not inconsiderable speed of 1.7 kilometers per second, until it is about 100 meters high. At that moment the solid fuel engine is fired and the Pulqui “brakesalmost completely and releases, in free fall, the load protected by the “Tensegrity”.
Again the charge is accelerated by lunar gravity and ends impacting against the surface at about 65 kilometers per hour. And that is where the idea of these young Argentine engineers fully works: when it touches the lunar floor, the Tensegrity so in a controlled manner and manages to absorb the energy of the impact while destroying itself. Result? The payload lands intact and you can start your task of monitoring, observing, transmitting, or whatever.
costs
Until now, the team responsible for Pulqui XXI – which, in addition to its three main promoters receives the intellectual contributions of six other experts in aeronautical engineering and computer science– It takes many hours of theoretical development invested and a couple of prototypes that have already been “tested” successfully in the Aerospace Technology Center that works in the engineering faculty of La Plata. His final calculations indicate that the cost of each Pulqui XXI could be around US$120,000. And it is, according to industry sources, a low cost, especially since its idea is to use very good quality but standard components for its manufacture and assembly. This means that they will not be parts specially manufactured to be used in a space vehicle – something that raises the requirements and costs astronomically – but “with which we hope to achieve the lightest and most economical landing on the moon that has been carried out so far,” he defined. Ruffini.
The team responsible for Pulqui has already decided what to do with its prize: “we are going to invest the euros in continue developing the project. On the one hand, we are going to redefine some technical concepts in order to achieve greater precision in the landing site. And, on the other hand, we will continue to improve the design and each one of the components,” they explained. Of course, this implies continuing to present the Pulqui in other national and international competitions until we can assemble the first functional prototype.
Niche
What are the applications of projects like Pulqui XXI? Many. Although future missions to Mars take marketing, what is concrete is that in order to achieve this leap, countless technologies must be tested and fine-tuned beforehand. For this, it is much more efficient to use the Moon as a testing ground, which, compared to Mars or Venus, is a “space laboratory” that orbits just 384 thousand kilometers from Earth and requires a trip of 3 to 5 days instead of of months.
On the other hand, experts in space research and development explained to NEWS that “the Moon today could function as an excellent laboratory: It offers us many possibilities to do simulations and examine solutions that will later be used in other uses of the career and the space business: from adventure tourism to asteroid mining to facilitating a safe and regular trip for astronauts to Mars. And in this sense, many opportunities open up for entrepreneurs and start-ups from all over the world to add their ideas and contributions to these innovative vehicle developments and groundbreaking missions. An increasingly important demand is expected for many of these space exploitation niches.”
An example? In 2020, NASA signed a preliminary US$14 million contract with Nokia to advance the development of a 4G communications network to be installed on the Moon. According to Boschetto, it is expected that -in the next 10 years- the “economy” linked to lunar exploration and exploitation bills around US$ 50 billion. And the medium-term idea of the creators of Pulqui XXI is to set up a company that inserts their idea into that future and increasingly promising business.
Concept / CubeSat
In their heyday, just a few years ago, observation and communications satellites reached weigh tons and have a considerable size. For example, the Argentine SAOCOM that is currently in orbit weighs about three tons and measures 4.7 meters high by 1.2 meters on each side. That makes them useful and precise equipment, but also extremely expensive to build and complex to launch. Supported by advances in electronic miniaturization, a couple of decades ago the concept of “CubeSat“. These are small-sized satellites – cubes of 10 by 10 by 10 centimeters – that weigh just over 1 kilogram and are assembled using standardized technologies and components. That is why they are cheap and accessible devices. The CubeSats had an excellent reception in the academic community since numerous teams of students and professors from university entities around the world set out to design and put into orbit hundreds of satellites of this new category. In Argentina, the National University of La Plata has several Projects of that style and it is pioneernext to the University of Comahue.
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