On Parametric Excitation for Exploration of Lava Tubes and Caves

Huge lava tubes with an approximate diameter of 65–225 m were found on the surfaces of Moon and Mars in the late 2000’s. It has been argued that the interiors of the caves are spacious, and are suitable to build artificial bases with habitable features such as constant temperature, as well as protection from both meteorites and harmful radiation. In line of the above, a number of studies which regard the soft landing mechanisms on the bottom of the lava tubes have been proposed. In this paper, aiming to extend the ability to explore arbitrary surface caves, we propose a mechanism which is able to reach the ceiling of lava tubes. The basic concept of our proposed mechanism consists of a rover connected to an oscillating sample-gatherer, wherein the rover is able to adjust the length of the rope parametrically to increase the deflection angle by considering periodic changes in the pivot, and thus to ease the collection of samples by hitting against the ceiling of the cave. Relevant simulations confirmed our theoretical observations which predict the increase of deflection angle by periodically winding and rewinding the rope according to pivotal variations. We believe the our proposed approach brings the building blocks to enable finer control of exploration mechanisms of lava tubes and narrow environments.