As missions expand to a sustainable presence in the Moon, and extend for durations longer than one year in lunar outpost, the effectiveness of the instrumentation and hardware has to be revolutionized if NASA is to meet high levels of mission safety, reliability, and overall success. This paper addresses a method of non-intrusive local inspection of surface and sub-surface conditions, interfaces, laminations and seals in both space vehicle and ground operations with an integrated suite of imaging sensors during pre-launch operations. It employs an advanced Raman spectrometer with additional spectrometers and lidar mounted on a flying robot to constantly monitor the space hardware as well as inner surface of the vehicle and ground operations hardware. A team of micro flying robots with necessary sensors and photometers is required to internally and externally monitor the entire space vehicle. The micro flying robots should reach an altitude with least amount of energy, where astronauts have difficulty in reaching and monitoring the materials and subsurface faults. The micro flying robots have an embedded fault detection system which acts as an advisory system and in many cases micro flying robots act as a `Supervisor' to fix the problems. The micro flying robot uses contra-rotating propellers powered by an ultra-thin, ultrasonic motor with currently the world's highest power weight ratio, and is balanced in mid-air by means of the world's first stabilizing mechanism using a linear actuator. The essence of micromechatronics has been brought together in high-density mounting technology to minimize the size and weight. Each robot can take suitable payloads of photometers, embedded chips for image analysis and micro pumps for sealing cracks or fixing other material problems. This paper also highlights advantages that this type of non-intrusive techniques offer over costly and monolithic traditional techniques.


    Access

    Check access

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Nonintrusive techniques of inspections during the pre-launch phase of space vehicle


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    Modeling, Simulation, and Verification of Space-based Systems II ; 2005 ; Orlando,Florida,United States


    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2005-05-19





    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



    Nonintrusive techniques of inspections during the pre-launch phase of space vehicle [5799-12]

    Thirumalainambi, R. / Bardina, J. E. / Miyazawa, O. et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2005


    Investigation of Existing Nonintrusive Inspection Technologies for Port Cargo Inspections

    Qi, Yi / Salehi, Yasamin / Wang, Yubian | Transportation Research Record | 2013



    Nonintrusive temperature measurements at ceramic heatshields of space vehicles

    Frueholz, H / Auweter-Kurtz, M / Habiger, H et al. | AIAA | 1995


    Nonintrusive shaft speed sensor

    Barkhoudarian, S. / Wyett, L. / Maram, J. | NTRS | 1985