Design and Testing of Lunar Rock and Regolith Storage Device for Moon Resource Exploration

Lunar rocks contain abundant information about the Moon and are of critical value for lunar resource exploration. This paper presents a storage device for lunar rock blocks and regolith, and experimental studies are conducted to evaluate its performance. Due to constraints in weight and structural dimensions, the device adopts a single-motor-driven locking mechanism to achieve the clamping and release of the storage basket, while also enabling the temporary storage cup to assist in regolith collection and sample discarding through tilting. Based on the design of the rock block storage basket’s locking/release mechanism and the regolith temporary storage cup, functional tests are carried out to verify that the device can perform rock block storage, regolith sampling assistance, and sample disposal. The experiments demonstrate that the single motor can successfully achieve the locking and release of the storage basket while simultaneously driving the tilting motion of the temporary storage cup for sample discarding. The research findings can provide a reference for the design of extravehicular payloads related to rock collection, storage, and analysis in future lunar resource exploration missions.