Astrium engineers develop tools for asteroid sample return

For space science and engineering, the coming decade is all about sample return. While previous planetary exploration missions have concentrated on what can be achieved with sensors on board spacecraft and sending back data and images, what the scientists really want is the materials themselves: chunks of rock and dust from other planets that they can study at their leisure with the full panoply of instruments at their disposal on Earth.

This, of course, creates a challenge for the engineers who have to find a way to comply with the scientists’ wishes. How do you bring something back from where no one has gone before?

EADS Astrium’s engineering team has been working on this problem in an attempt to figure out how to take samples of regolith – surface material – from an asteroid. Anticipating a proposed mission out to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the team has tried to find a way to grab, scrape or gouge material from the surface.