Newton worked with NASA Goddard to develop the capture lid mechanism for NASA’s CCRS Spacecraft, a key mission component to the as-proposed Mars Sample Return. As a member of the CLM team at Newton, I worked on structural design, analysis, and thermal analysis.

The Capture Lid Mechanism is designed to open and close on the exterior of CCRS to facilitate retrieval of a small soil sample orbiting Mars. A tight mass budget and strenuous thermal environment were my main obstacles.

Our team investigated a number of solutions for the door’s primary structure. The first design featured a honeycomb core with glued facesheets, which was extremely stiff but posed thermal problems. In response, I designed machined aluminum structure through CAD (SOLIDWORKS) and analysis (FEMAP) iteration which met all structural requirements and eliminated glued interfaces. The design features thin ribs which vary in height along the length and span of the disc according to curve functions which minimize strain in the primary bending modes.

I used Autodesk Fusion to create an organic arm to join the lid to the drive shaft. This structure minimizes mass while hitting stiffness targets for a number of load cases, and is machinable by a 5-axis CNC mill.

I modeled the CLM in Thermal Desktop and performed subsystem analysis for all driving Earth orbit, Mars orbit, and transit cases. I created a Python script to transpose the organic arm structure, typically challenging to model, into a coarse nodal mesh. I processed and presented on-orbit results at a GSFC CDR and demonstrated that Newton’s material and component selection met mission requirements.

The Capture Lid Mechanism was fabricated and successfully tested to EDU level prior to CCRS congressional cancellation in 2023.