Team 04 - Flying Robotic Centrifuge

There are two main issues from which this project originated. Currently, there is no way to do the following in space:

1. Continuously simulate Earth gravity (or more).

2. Effectively separate mixed-matrix materials.

To the first point, a large reason for having a laboratory in orbit around Earth is to study the effect of gravity on various systems and processes, namely biological. To obtain accurate results in experiments where gravity is the independent variable, the ability to have an experimental control group in the same environment and experiencing 1g is critical. The current method of achieving this is to have the experimental control group on Earth, which poses difficulty in controlling all other variables in the experiment, potentially reducing experimental quality.

To the second point, this is classically achieved using a centrifuge. Centrifuges are used in various fields for separating mixed-matrix materials within a sample vessel by spinning the vessel around a central axis and producing a centripetal acceleration of >1G. This forces heavier, denser materials away from the axis of rotation, and to the bottom of the vessel, separating them from the lighter, less dense materials. In health sciences, this can be used for separating bodily fluid samples for ease of diagnosis or testing. In mining applications, this process can separate the materials contained within a water-slurry sample for easier extraction and testing of high-value resources.

With the rapid advances in space programs, globally, comes increased interest in establishing human colonies off-planet, be it for research or tourism, as well as extracting resources from elsewhere in the solar system to build and power those colonies. Performing the listed tasks in space will require new and innovative solutions for problems we have already solved on Earth. This project will tackle the issues of creating a 1g environment and centrifugally separating materials in low- to microgravity environments. Typical centrifuges pose a problem in these environments for various reasons. Chief among them is weight. With the cost of ground-to-space transport still being many thousands of dollars per kilogram, centrifuges pose a very high cost due to the counterweights typically needed for stable rotation of materials. Many scientific-grade centrifuges are very heavy and are therefore quite costly to send to orbit. A comparably troubling issue is particular to microgravity environments. A traditional centrifuge requires that the rotational energy be absorbed by a much larger mass, allowing most of the energy to be transferred to the materials being spun. If there is no apparent gravity, like on the International Space Station, then a large spinning mass will transfer its energy to the station, if they are coupled in any way, causing the station itself, albeit very slowly, to start counter-rotating against the centrifuge, then causing guidance and control issues and, more alarmingly, structural issues. These problems are the focus of this project.