[REGOLITH REAPER] NASA Lunar Sampling System

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The digging bucket, made of 6061 aluminium, steel, and titanium, weighs 460g including the regolith container and 416g without it. Power consumption includes a vibration module at 5-10 W, optical regolith level sensors drawing around 1W or less, totaling 15W in worst case scenarios. The digging bucket connects to the rover arm via an arm mount plate. Visual inspection tray magnetic leg holders and the regolith container are mounted on the rover main frame. Sorting regolith entails: digging until a layer is revealed, collecting the regolith in the bucket, flipping it 180 degrees, turning on the vibration motor, waiting for sorting, tilting the bucket 45 degrees or more to let regolith fall into outlet channels, repeating until two outlet channels are full, ejecting sorted regolith into a visual inspection tray, visually inspecting the sample with a rover mast camera/arm camera, lifting the tray if satisfactory, dropping regolith into a container, removing leftovers, and repeating for smaller regolith until the container is full. Optical regolith level sensors, based on IR proximity sensors, indicate when the container is full. Andrzej Laczewski.