Powering a Mission to a Metal Asteroid

Our design challenge begins with this fact: in recent decades, NASA has found evidence that an asteroid called "16 Psyche", is made of mostly metal. This makes it an unusual object, and has spurred a lot of interest in visiting it to collect valuable scientific data. There would be many challenges associated with this mission, so NASA is partnering with universities across the country, like RIT, to address specific challenges related to the mission. Our team chose the "power solution" option for this project, meaning we had to figure out a way to power a rover or some other vehicle on an asteroid at least 186 million miles from earth.