Crashing Rockets in the Name of Science

Feb-27-14 A new plan for gathering samples from asteroids involves shooting the asteroid with a harpoon-like sampling rocket—which is certainly much easier than trying to land on the moving object.

Developed by Robert Winglee of the University of Washington, the harpoon plan makes use of special rockets that are able to bore into an asteroid or other difficult-to-reach object (such as a volcano). A specially-designed harpoon rocket would be shot at the asteroid, where it would crash, creating a mound of debris. Openings in the harpoon-rocket’s nose would gather the debris and then funnel them to a capsule inside the rocket. The capsule itself would be tethered to a spacecraft or balloon, and could be reeled in to allow the samples to be recovered.

According to Winglee: “The novel thing about this is that it developed out of our student rocket class. It’s been a successful class, but there were a significant number of rockets that went ballistically into the ground. We learned a lot of physics from those crashes.”

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[DVICE.COM]
[UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON]

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