Experimental Research on Surface Sampling Based on Lunar Soil Simulants

Abstract:

Lunar sampling consists of deep sampling and surface sampling. As a powerful supplement for deep sampling, multiple sampling tools are designed for surface sampling, however little research is focus on the interaction between sampling tool and lunar soil. Two simulated sampling tools, which could implement four actions (including digging, shoveling, clipping and penetration with vibration), were designed for surface sampling in this paper. By using the corresponding sensors, the torque (or force) acting on sampling tools can be monitored in real-time. The experiments were made on different motion parameters by use of six different lunar soil simulants and two sets of sampling equipments. Based on the observation during the experiments, specific phenomena appeared due to the different properties of lunar soil simulants and usual sand; and according to the analysis on experiments data, it is showed that excepting digging action, the relationship between the implement movements by the rest three actions and the force is an approximate linear one, while the torque on the implement of digging action is divided into 4 stages depending on the implement movement position.