Thermal picks for anchoring on icy moons

Abstract

Europa, Enceladus, and other icy moons are exciting science targets, but our capabilities to adequately explore these planetary bodies needs to be developed. Gripping the surface ice may aid the stability and mobility of surface landers and mobile explorers that are sent to the surface of an icy moon. This paper presents an approach to anchoring into the surface of an icy moon using a heated pick.The proposed thermodynamic approach contrasts with the traditional mechanical approach to inserting terrestrial ice anchors. This thermodynamic approach maintains the ice structure to provide a reliable hold. The low temperatures and lack of a significant atmosphere on most of the icy moons cause surface conditions to stay below the triple point of water, the primary constituent of the surface ice for both Europa and Enceladus. Under these conditions the surface water ice will sublimate when sufficiently heated. The thermal pick concept presented in this paper is used to study the nature of the sublimation that results from forced insertion of an object into ice, which could then be used as an anchor for stability and mobility.While the surfaces of the icy moons are composed primarily of water ice at cryogenic and vacuum conditions, the nature of a sublimation process can be more readily examined with frozen CO2, which sublimates under atmospheric conditions. This paper explores the physical phenomena and thermodynamic design considerations of a heated device that uses a sublimation based insertion into frozen CO2 under atmospheric conditions. This approach was found to allow for proper insertion of thermal picks with energetic efficiencies of up to 90%.

Keywords

• Aerospace engineering
• Energy
• Mechanical engineering
• Physics
• Europa
• Ice